There was some argument about AZCOM getting access to Phoenix hospitals on this thread not too long ago. Looks like the nay-sayers were wrong. Where's Novacek88 now?
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0524midwestern24.html
Midwestern University gains access to hospitals
Jodie Snyder
The Arizona Republic
May. 24, 2005 12:00 AM
Every day, hundreds of students at Midwestern University, a large private medical school in Glendale, learn the finer points of human anatomy.
But Midwestern officials could give their own pointers about muscle - political muscle, that is.
The little-known school weighed in during the recent University of Arizona Phoenix medical school debate at the right time and extracted some long-coveted considerations from its rival. Both Midwestern and the UA train medical school students in Phoenix, but ever since Midwestern arrived nine years ago, it has argued that the UA blocked access to critical hospital spots for its students, which the UA denies.
The result of Midwestern recent efforts: More osteopath students will probably train in the Valley's largest hospitals, and Midwestern hopes more will stay and practice in the area.
Midwestern accomplished its goals by telling legislators it supported funding the UA medical school in Phoenix as long as Midwestern got access to scarce hospital spots for its third- and fourth-year students. The University of Arizona needed all the support it could muster to get funding for the medical school.
Arguing to legislators that the state needs more physicians, Midwestern persuaded state lawmakers to pass a law that hospitals can't be prohibited by a medical school from taking students from another school.
The passing of the law shows the political intricacies of educating doctors. It also comes at a time when the UA is trying to get its downtown Phoenix medical school up and running and other private medical schools are looking around in the Valley about moving here.
Located on a 150-acre campus, Midwestern offers four years of basic medical school classes, with the last two concentrated in clinical rotations through physician's offices and hospitals. Those rotations are key in the training for doctors-to-be.
There is a limited number of spots in the Valley for students to train in hospitals and UA students usually take them.
Unlike the UA, which trains allopathic physicians, Midwestern trains osteopaths, a type of physician that stresses holistic medicine. Over the past decades, allopathic medicine has overshadowed osteopathic; membership in the American Medical Association is far greater than membership in the osteopathic counterpart. Across the country, the rivalry between MDs and DOs has been intense but many say the acrimony between the two has died off.
Kathleen Goeppinger, Midwestern University's president, downplayed the rivalry as a reason for the lack of access to hospital rotations.
"The hospitals told us they didn't want to step on the UA's toes by offering the spots," she said.
Both Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center and St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center say they don't have any Midwestern third-year students because they have designed longstanding "defined curriculum" with the UA that makes it difficult to bring in students from other schools.
Banner says more than 30 percent of fourth-year students are from Midwestern. St. Joes says it varies around 20 percent.
Without more spots, 38 percent of Midwestern's 266 third- and fourth-year students went out of state for their training.
Midwestern told legislators that keeping those students would help create more Arizona physicians by encouraging students to remain here. But university officials say they don't know how many students decided not to return to Arizona because of the lack of spots.
With their latest legislative victory, Midwestern hopes to get its students into hospital rotations as early as fall.
Judy Bernas, associate vice president for federal relations for the UA, isn't so sure about that timetable, saying the UA wants to work with Midwestern but placing its own students appropriately has to be its first priority.
After a legislative battle, the UA got the money to educate 24 new students a year in Phoenix. It wants to eventually have 150 students a year in Phoenix. The UA already has 80 to 100 third- and fourth-year students in rotations in Phoenix.
The UA pays the hospital some of the training costs for those third- and fourth-year students.
Midwestern residents, medical students who have graduated, don't face problems getting into hospital spots, unlike their third- and fourth-year counterparts, Goeppinger said.
Unlike a medical-school program, hospitals pick their own residents.
Nor did the school's about 900 pharmacy students find any problems in getting hospital rotations. The school has 507 pharmacy graduates, and 384 current students.
"They were so desperate, they came to our door begging for our students," she said.
The medical-school debate has helped put a spotlight on Midwestern, which has been growing steadily over the past nine years.
In 1996, when Midwestern, which has trained osteopathic students for more than 100 years near Chicago, decided to open a second campus in the Valley there was no discussion of a physician shortage in Arizona.
The non-profit Midwestern, which has $245 million in assets, decided the area provided opportunities to train students and serve patients.
It has grown to be a large academic campus, complete with living quarters. The campus also trains other health care professionals such as physician assistants and occupational therapists. It also offers a program for perfusionists, who are trained to operate heart and lung machines and recently began a program to train nurse anesthetists, one of the most in-demand health care professions.
It is also starting a podiatry program and is looking at bringing clinical psychology to campus as well.
Goeppinger says Midwestern is thinking about developing a nursing school. The community colleges do a good job in training entry-level nurses but there is a need for more advanced programs, she said.
