The Role of Medical Education in Community Hospital Sustainability: A Case for Increasing Models of Integration

Abstract

U.S. hospitals are facing unprecedented margin compression and experiencing ongoing staffing issues, not only with nursing and ancillary services but with physicians as well. Looming physician shortages add to the vulnerabilities of acute care facilities to maintain normal operations. The traditional model of physician recruitment and retention may be inadequate to fill gaps, and novel approaches are needed. Vertical integration of medical education into health systems ecosystems may provide benefit to future stability. A recent uptick in proposed (and accredited) medical schools in the United States, particularly in Osteopathic Medicine, has seen many of these schools collaborating with community hospitals to provide the clinical training experiences required. Early reflection on this rapid growth (at least in one region) suggests that nascent physician education and training programs can have a significant synergy with community health/hospital systems that have not had such programming heretofore. Criticisms of such patterns are also addressed with a discussion of rebuttals and potential solutions. Hospitals that currently do not have medical education programs should consider the benefits of collaborating with medical education programs and seek to integrate their mission with local and regional providers of such programming.