Tagged: doctors

A federal grant will put more primary care providers in medically-underserved areas of southeast Michigan.

The $21 million grant will help train medical residents in five federally-qualified health centers.

The program is a partnership between Michigan State University’s medical school and the Detroit-Wayne County Health Authority.

Chris Allen is CEO of the Health Authority. He says it will add much-needed primary care doctors to the medical safety net.

“And it ultimately will provide medical homes for the people who live in these areas, and thus not a reliance on the emergency room for their care," he said.

Allen says residents who participate in the program will be eligible for medical school loan forgiveness.

The plan is to train 85 residents over three years, starting next summer. Allen says after learning the practice in southeast Michigan residencies, the new doctors will stay in the area.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - A hearing is scheduled in Lansing on Wednesday on a package of bills that would prevent some patients from suing doctors for malpractice.

The hearing is 8 a.m. before the state Senate Insurance Committee in Lansing.

Leaders of the 16,000-member Michigan State Medical Society say the Patients First Reform Package closes a legal loophole that allows unnecessary suits to be filed and prevents trial lawyers from artificially inflating awards.

Several major changes to Michigan's medical malpractice laws will be discussed in a state senate committee tomorrow.

The “Patients First Reform Package” would make it harder to successfully sue a doctor for malpractice and potentially reduce jury awards.

Doctors are already required to send immunization records to the State of Michigan. With the new system, the data will arrive in real time with no extra steps for the doctors or hospitals.

The system was launched by a non-profit called Michigan Health Connect. Executive Director Doug Dietzman says eventually the data could travel both ways – so doctors could avoid giving patients shots they don’t need. He outline tetanus as a common example. 

Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear legal arguments over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The federal health care law has come under fire for a variety of reasons, including changes to the way Americans will get their health care.

Some state lawmakers say they have not given up on efforts to restore money in the state budget for training medical residents at Michigan hospitals.

The Legislature dropped $9 million in medical training funds from an end-of-the-year budget bill before adjourning for the year.

But Republican state Senator Roger Kahn says he will make a renewed effort to fund the program in 2012. Kahn is a also doctor and chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee. Kahn says the funding helps keep doctors in Michigan, which faces a physician shortage.

"We’ve got to have a new generation of physicians and those physicians, when they’re trained here, have a much-higher likelihood of staying here in Michigan and becoming Michigan physicians," he said

The most recent annual survey of physicians conducted by the state Department of Community Health found 60 percent of doctors stay and practice close to the hospitals where they trained as residents.

Classes start today at the new, privately funded Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine in southeast Michigan. It's the first of three new medical schools expected to come online in the next few years.