More medical students seeking MBAs; paramedics providing primary care services

Several news outlets look at aspects of physician training.

The New York Times: Adjusting, More M.D.'s Add M.B.A.
Under heavy pressure from government regulators and insurance companies, more and more physicians across the country are learning to think like entrepreneurs. As recently as the late 1990s, there were only five or six joint M.D./M.B.A degree programs at the nation's universities, said Dr. Maria Y. Chandler, a pediatrician with an M.B.A. who is an associate clinical professor in the medical and business schools at the University of California, Irvine. "Now there are 65," she said (Freudenheim, 9/5).

Dallas Morning News: Dallas To Get Second Medical School
Dallas is getting a second medical school by December, the first time in nearly a century the city will have more than one clinical training program for students. The Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine is expected to announce an agreement Tuesday with Baylor Health Care System (Roberson, 9/5).

The New York Times: Using Pretend Patients To Train For Real Crises
Created, in large part, as a response to the Sept. 11 attack, the New York Simulation Center for the Health Sciences is scheduled to officially open its doors on Tuesday ... the facility will be the most advanced of its kind in the city: a high-tech site where emergency personnel can train for just about any calamity -; terrorist attacks, accidents, natural disasters -; that can be replicated by a team of some of the most sophisticated mannequins to be found anywhere (Flegenheimer, 9/5).

Meanwhile, in some areas of the country with serious shortages of primary care doctors, paramedics are helping to provide care.

The Associated Press/MSNBC: Paramedics Filling Health Care Gap As Need Grows
A select group of paramedics in several states is helping to provide primary health care by making house calls -; an initiative encouraged by the federal health care law to address shortages in primary care and cut down on expensive visits to doctors and emergency rooms. ... [The program] is free for anyone in Eagle County, which has an uninsured rate of 26 percent. But it is funded so far by $700,000 in grants from the Colorado health department, two private health organizations and the ambulance district (Paulson, 9/5).