18
COM Outlook . Winter 2014
FACULTY PERSPECTIVE
Proposed Hospital Offers
Bonanza of Benefits
By Joseph De Gaetano, D.O., M.S.Ed, FAAFP, FACOFP
Associate Dean for Clinical Curriculum
and Graduate Medical Education
NSU-COM takes great pride in the clinical
training opportunities it affords its medical stu-
dents. Similarly, the college takes great pride
in the maintenance and growth of its affiliated
graduate medical education (GME) training
programs to serve the postgraduate needs of its
students. With recent medical school expan-
sion, however, it has become difficult to retain
and identify new clinical training opportunities
for NSU-COM’s students.
Osteopathic medical school expansion
and the proposed pending changes to the
Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical
Education’s (ACGME)
common program rules
have urgently demonstrated NSU-COM’s need
to further grow osteopathic graduate medi-
cal education (OGME) training opportunities
for its graduates. The planned building of
a Hospital Corporation of America (HCA)-
supported academic medical center on NSU’s
main campus will address these urgent needs
in dramatic fashion. It also will heighten
health care services quality and availability to
the citizens of Broward County.
The ability for NSU-COM to retain and
grow inpatient clinical training opportunities
for its medical students has recently become
a more challenging task. Florida’s original
medical schools at the University of Miami,
University of Florida, and University of South
Florida have all expanded class sizes over the
PROPOSAL: Creation of
a hospital for teaching
and research that will
serve as the corner-
stone of a collaboration
between NSU and HCA
East Florida, which will
bring greater choice and
access for patients in
the community. NSU’s
Academical Village
plans include more than
three-million square feet
of medical office, retail,
residential, financial,
hotel/conferencing, and
governmental space
alongside NSU’s Health
Care Clinics and contigu-
ous to the university’s
pending Center for Col-
laborative Research.
past few years. Florida has seen the open-
ing of five new medical schools over the past
several years—University of Central Florida,
Florida Atlantic University, Florida Interna-
tional University, Florida State University,
and the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic
Medicine-Bradenton Campus.
All are engaged in a
competition
to iden-
tify quality inpatient training locations for a
now-expanding cadre of third- and fourth-year
medical students that are attending these old
and new institutions. Similarly, it should be
noted that many osteopathic medical schools
located outside of Florida—as well as many off-
shore allopathic medical schools—also compete
with the in-state schools for a finite number of
inpatient clinical training sites within Florida.
The opening of an academic medical center on
NSU’s main campus will allow NSU-COM to
internally
address the clinical training needs
of its students. NSU-COM students will be
afforded the ability to experience exceptional
inpatient clinical training at their own
home
institution and thereby acutely diminish the
college’s urgent external need to identify new
quality inpatient training sites for its students.
As noted above, Florida has seen a recent
dramatic growth in the number of medical
schools contained within its borders. Corre-
spondingly, the United States has seen an ex-
ponential growth in medical schools across the
(Editor’s Note: Last fall, HCA East Florida filed a Certificate of Need (CON) with the Agency for Health
Care Administration requesting approval to build and operate a hospital of up to 100 beds that would
significantly enhance teaching and research on NSU’s main campus. If approved, the hospital will
anchor NSU’s Academical Village—a Jeffersonian concept that is defined as “a community of scholars
and students working closely, combining theory and practice”—and serve as the foundation for Broward
County’s only comprehensive research and medical center. Although the proposal was initially denied by
the Agency for Health Care Administration on December 6, efforts are currently underway to make the
hospital a reality at some point in the future. To that end, Dr. De Gaetano has detailed his reasoning for
why a hospital based on NSU’s main campus would be advantageous for the university, graduate medi-
cal education—and the community.)
