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Contact: Media Relations Officer
AAMC Press Room
Oct. 28-31, 2000, Hyatt Regency Chicago
312-565-4270, Skyway 261

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AAMC Issues Report on How Medical Schools and Teaching Hospitals Are Changing With New Health Care Environment

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Washington, D.C., October 25, 2000 -- A new report from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) describes how medical schools and teaching hospitals are managing change in the increasingly competitive health care environment. The report, "Managing Change: Strategies from Case Studies of Medical Schools and Teaching Hospitals," focuses upon the key strategies and policies that medical schools and teaching hospitals are employing as they work to preserve their social missions in a continuously evolving health care marketplace.

The report's development was led by the AAMC's Center for the Assessment and Management of Change in Academic Medicine (CAMCAM) in collaboration with the Association's Division of Health Care Affairs, the Division of Institutional Planning and Development, and the Division of Biomedical and Health Sciences Research.

In the 1990s, an increasingly competitive health care environment challenged the ability of medical schools and their teaching hospital partners to sustain their core missions of education, research, and patient care in the face of declining reimbursement for patient care services. These challenges demanded that medical schools and teaching hospitals work closely together to make the most effective use of limited resources. Their strategies included more refined planning and priority setting, strengthened governance, and changes in organization and management to become more efficient and to respond more quickly to the changing environment.

To assist medical schools and teaching hospitals in addressing these challenges, the AAMC, in 1995, established CAMCAM. The Center was designed to monitor, over the course of a five-year period, the impact of the health care environment on the missions of medical schools and teaching hospitals and to study (and report on) how these institutions are managing change.

CAMCAM took two approaches to achieve these objectives. One was to establish a Sentinel Network of 14 medical schools and their principal teaching hospitals to promote the open and timely exchange of information about academic medicine. A second approach was to analyze trends among the missions of medical schools and teaching hospitals, utilizing information from the AAMC's databases and from national databases available to the public. This new report is a culmination of these efforts.

The report consists of two parts: a narrative portrait of the challenges facing medical schools and teaching hospitals, providing examples of successful efforts by these institutions to organize and manage more effectively; and self-assessment tools to help medical schools, teaching hospitals, and faculty practices identify organizational needs and assess institutional readiness for change. The report looks at the organization and management of research in medical schools, the performance of the clinical enterprise, and the integration of the missions of academic medicine within the institutional infrastructure.

If you are with the media and would like to receive a copy of the report, please contact Jennifer Bush at 202-828-0041. Non-media requests should be directed to Lynn Nonnemaker at 202-828-0666.

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The Association of American Medical Colleges represents the 125 accredited U.S. medical schools; the 16 accredited Canadian medical schools; some 400 major teaching hospitals, including 74 Veterans Administration medical centers; 91 academic and professional societies representing nearly 88,000 faculty members; and the nation's 67,000 medical students and 102,000 residents.

Additional information about the AAMC and U.S. medical schools and teaching hospitals available at www.aamc.org/newsroom