December 14, 2001

COGME Reviews Final Report at December Meeting

Legislative authorization for COGME ends in September 2002, and the Council is developing a final report that points to its past contributions and suggests directions it will pursue if it is reauthorized.

After devoting a full day to a discussion of the report when it met Sept. 10-11, the Council signed off on a draft during its Dec. 5-6 meeting. It revisits more than a decade of Council recommendations on issues that include:

• The size and mix of the physician workforce;
  
• The distribution of the physician workforce;
  
• Minority representation in the physician workforce;
  
• International medical graduates in the physician workforce;
  
• Women in medicine;
  
• Interdisciplinary health care professionals;
  
• Quality of graduate medical education; and
  
• Financing graduate medical education in the context of the policy context in which they were made.

The report comments on the role COGME has played in raising issues and influencing both government policy and actions by private organizations. It suggests areas for future work by the Council if its legislative authorization is renewed, including:

• Physician workforce needs;
  
• Role of primary care providers other than physicians;
  
• Graduate medical education and unionization;
  
• Adequacy of health care workforce data;
  
• Care for the underserved;
  
• Changing models of insurance and physician workforce needs; and
  
• Collaboration among health professionals to improve the quality of health care.

The Council agreed that it should re-examine its 110, 50-50 recommendation. It will commission a report on the differences between (a) workforce needs based on a market approach that projects the current delivery and financing systems into the future and (b) workforce needs determined by starting from agreed-upon objectives. It also will pursue efforts to improve workforce data, working with the AMA and the HRSA workforce center. To further its diversity agenda, it will commission a study to look at minority representation in other sciences and at the effectiveness of early intervention in science teaching in grades K-6.

Stanley Bastacky, D.M.D., M.S.H.A., returned as acting executive secretary to the Council at this meeting. COGME is chaired by Carl Getto, M.D., senior vice president for Medical Affairs at University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics.

Attending the meeting was Laurinda Merritt, LCSW-BACS, a clinical social worker and director of Behavioral Medicine at Baton Rouge General Medical Center, and a new member of the Council. Ms. Merritt is on the family practice faculty at this private COTH member hospital and coordinates community-based rotations for residents. In her self-introduction, she mentioned that she is trying to help her hospital address the new ACGME core competencies. Ms. Merritt fills a slot on the Council formerly occupied by Jo Ivy Boufford, M.D., dean of the Wagner School of Public Administration, New York University. Dr. Boufford's term on the Council ended with this meeting.

Information: Sunny Yoder, AAMC Division of Health Care Affairs, 202-828-0497.