Boston, MA:Tufts University School of Medicine and Maine Medical Center today announce the establishment of a new partnership with a “uniquely Maine” curriculum.
Medical students will spend their first two years at Tufts, then move to Maine Medical Center for the entire clerkship period in year three and portions of the monthly rotations in year four. The students will be jointly recruited and selected for a unique curriculum that will be co-governed and led by MMC and Tufts. When they graduate, each student will receive a combined diploma from MMC and Tufts.
Twenty of the 36 seats will be reserved for legal residents of Maine, students attending Maine colleges or students from adjacent New England states or other locales deemed similar to Maine to encourage participants to establish medical practice in Maine.
The unique curriculum, or the “Maine track”, will emphasize rural and small town practice, and break new ground in its approach to teaching safety, quality, and team-based care. Students in this track will also have the option of pursuing dual degrees, such as MD/MBA, MD/PhD, and MD/MPH.
“This is not the usual affiliation between a medical center and a medical school,” says Vincent S. Conti, MMC President and Chief Executive Officer. “This is a true partnership, co-developed and equally governed and managed by the two organizations. It is a unique approach to find a solution for what is becoming a national crisis: a lack of physicians,specifically primary care physicians, and especially in rural areas.”
“Tufts has a strong track record of training Maine physicians with more than 300 Tufts doctors now living in Maine, of which 60 are currently on staff at the Maine Medical Center,” commented Tufts University School of Medicine Dean Michael Rosenblatt, M.D. “Although this is a new agreement, our affiliation with Maine Medical Center began in the 1930’s and 1940’s when Tufts students, funded by the Bingham Program, rotated to Maine hospitals. We are excited to re-establish and revitalize this important relationship.”
The partnership is the result of months of planning and negotiation by an Undergraduate Medical Education Steering Committee and three different medical schools. The hospital moved forward with Tufts because of what committee chair Peter Bates, M.D., MMC’s Chief of Medicine, described as the “perfect match of needs and philosophy” between the two institutions.
“This partnership allows both parties to contribute to a unique outcome that neither could achieve on its own,” Dr. Bates said. “This is a rare historical opportunity to boost medical education in Maine and do it in a fiscally responsible manner, as contrasted to creating an entirely new medical school. Our teaching physicians will have faculty appointments at Tufts, and there will be a dedicated dean and other staff for the program. This program will allow greater access to a high quality medical education for qualified Maine students.”
“The importance of developing robust and dynamic relationships with teaching hospital institutions and their real-world ‘classrooms,’ where our medical students first experience caring for patients, cannot be overstated,” said Amy Kuhlik, M.D., Dean of Student Affairs at Tufts University School of Medicine. “Maine Medical Center is a new and enthusiastic partner in our efforts to train student-physicians. The academic structure of the agreement enables each partner to contribute to the medical curriculum and student experience. It is a partnership in the best sense of the word.”
Plans are to seek grant support, philanthropy, and state funding to subsidize tuition for the Maine students in the program. Both MMC and Tufts have committed to aggressively pursuing support that will allow Maine students to attend without an unusual financial hardship.
The partnership between the two institutions will extend beyond medical education. Opportunities for collaboration include signature clinical programs and research. Tufts has active research programs in genomics, clinical research/evidence-based medicine, regenerative medicine, drugs, and biologics, which offer a good fit for the Maine Medical Center Research Institute.
MMC has long had affiliations with medical schools (including Tufts, until 1980). In these more traditional arrangements, third and fourth year medical students have come to the hospital for rotations through various services. The hospital has provided the educational opportunity, but the medical school has had full responsibility for recruiting and selecting the students, designing the curriculum, and managing the program. MMC’s current affiliation with the University of Vermont College of Medicine, will end in 2011, when the first MMC/Tufts students arrive.
MMC also has an active postgraduate medical education program, with 207 physicians in 18 residencies and fellowships. It has long been known that many physicians tend to establish their practices near where they complete their residencies, and historically some 25-30% of MMC’s residents remain in Maine (in some specialties, such as psychiatry and geriatrics, half of the residents remain in Maine). In a similar manner, it is hoped that medical students in the Tufts/MMC program will favor MMC residencies as they continue their training.
The federal government predicts that by 2020 – only a few years after the first graduates of the MMC/Tufts program enter practice – the United States will have a shortage of more than 24,000 physicians. That prediction was cited in a report from Pricewaterhousecoopers released in July 2007, that included a recommendation for educators and providers to work together, “forging alliances to provide not only education but required financing” to address the shortage. The same report noted that the problem will be most acute in rural areas and in primary care specialties.