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The checks and balances of the Greater Medical Center's program ensure optimal risk management for hospitals, attending physicians and students by imposing consistent U.S. clinical medicine guidelines for visiting international students which often exceed U.S. standards.
International students currently access the U.S. clinical system via multiple routes that can increase risk to hospitals, patient care and physicians. Some routes include unwelcome solicitation of physicians for rotations, seeing patients in the hospital with a physician without first going through appropriate orientation and credentialing, accessing patient charts without sufficient HIPAA and JACHO training, and paying physicians directly. All of these approaches have their own inherent dangers and enhanced risks.
The Greater Medical Center's program mitigates the risk by implementing appropriate protocols to access U.S. clinical medicine safely, without jeopardizing patient care or unforeseen risk to the hospital and physician(s) medical licensure.
A recent article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution questioned the possible lack of supervision of medical students at a major healthcare facility in Atlanta, GA. Greater Medical Center's controls, protect, and decrease the risk of unsafe clinical practices by providing direct supervision by licensed physicians to all medical students.
Other controls developed in support of risk management are reflected in a proprietary student database, developed by GMC Group, to access and manage student and attending physician data, their clinical whereabouts, and their history, quickly and efficiently. This information management source has proven critical for providing prior students the precise data requested by state medical boards for licensure and their medical schools for graduation. Because of these controls, participating hospitals have outsourced their IMG/GME departments to GMC Group for administration and safekeeping.
The Greater Medical Center thoroughly reviews the bylaws of all affiliated hospitals to ensure that students rotating meet the medical student rotation guidelines for the hospitals. If access to the bylaws are unavailable, Greater Medical Center interfaces with the senior executive administrators of the hospital to establish appropriate student rotation guidelines.
The Greater Medical Center ensures that all IMGs rotating, whether inpatient or outpatient with affiliated clinical facilities, attend an 8 hour mandatory orientation and credentialing process. GMC Group provides a comprehensive overview on HIPAA and JCAHO compliance training, ID badge processing, taking appropriate history and physicals and review of various patient notes, conduct, professionalism, attendance, goals, objectives review, and dress code discussion. This is exactly the same orientation and credentialing procedure that U.S. students undergo before beginning their rotations, which are all part of a consistent process to standardize the students/graduates experience.
In addition to coordinating clinical rotation placement, the Greater Medical Center also provides consultations for international medical schools and foreign medical graduates who wish to practice in the U.S. and private physician offices. The organization seeks to provide continuous development of core syllabi and state medical boards regarding the standardization of state requirements for U.S. medical licensure. GMC Group also has a health policy division which focuses on national, state, and local health policy issues as well as state medical licensure requirements.
The Greater Medical Center: Comparable to U.S. Standards
The Directors of the Greater Medical Center believe that it is critical to conduct the organization's program in total parallel with the U.S. clinical system as closely as possible. GMC Group policies and procedures consistently support the objective of standardization for medical education. GMC Group takes pride in each student's educational experience and is aware of the diversity in the U.S. Therefore, the Directors try to diversify the student body to match that of the intended service recipient population. America is a "melting pot" and diversity within the physician population is essential to patient care, patient-physician relationships, and cultural competencies, which often times are overlooked within the medical community.
Critical facts Necessitating the Greater Medical Center's Program
Several recent studies have alerted the U.S. of a major impending healthcare crisis expected to impact the U.S. within the next 15 years. According to Richard Cooper, the Director of the Health Policy Institute at the Medical College of Wisconsin, the shortage may have a magnitude of 200,000 physicians by 2020.
It is a fact that each year the U.S. accepts over 6,000 foreign trained physicians into residency due to a lack of medical schools in the United States. Additionally, residency directors constantly complain of the inconsistent clinical experiences of their new residents who have trained outside the U.S. system. Many residency directors are now requiring that their future residents only apply after having supporting documentation of hands-on clinical experience in the U.S. and recent letters of recommendation from U.S. supervising attending physicians.
The Greater Medical Center addresses all of these issues by ensuring that students who finish their basic medical education outside the U.S. gain extensive training in U.S. clinical medicine, have appropriate orientation, are knowledgeable of domestic nomenclature, and are aware of the HIPPA and JACHO guidelines. GMC Group will continue to ensure that U.S. residency directors have an increasing number of qualified residency candidates whose educational and clinical experiences are at parity with U.S. diagnostic and procedural standards.
Management
The Greater Medical Center is managed by Cecil Bennett, M.D. who serves as President and Milo Pinckney, who serves as Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Bennett is a graduate of Morehouse School of Medicine and The Morehouse Family Practice residency program, where he served as Chief Resident. Currently, Dr. Bennett practices family medicine in Atlanta, GA. Mr. Pinckney has an extensive background in Finance and Business Administration. He is the former Chief Operations Officer for St. Eustatius University School of Medicine, in St. Eustatius, Netherlands Antilles. Additionally, Mr. Pinckney has an array of healthcare management experience. He was the Chief Executive Officer for Hinsdale Medical Management, where he served for ten years and developed primary care facilities with the purpose of providing quality healthcare to communities in need throughout various cities in the State of New York.
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