PREVENTING ACADEMIC-MEDICAL-CENTER FROM BECOMING AN OXYMORON

Many academic medical institutions are facing serious threats to their survival today as changes in the organization and financing of health care delivery and reductions in federal support create damaging press ures. In order for Americans to continue to have the best health care in the world, academic medicine and its crucial contributions of medic al education, training, and research must receive adequate support. Th e author maintains that it is up to the Association of American Medica l Colleges and associated organizations to ensure that this message is heard and recognized and to seek an all-payer approach that would sup port the costs associated with medical education and training and woul d allow teaching hospitals to compete on a level playing field with no n-teaching hospitals. Academic medical institutions must face painful transformations while maintaining their academic missions; the author discusses the nature of these transformations and missions, particular ly research, and outlines useful strategies to maintain these missions , such as establishing a centralized approach to curriculum and having clinical and basic science faculty form alliances to address common r esearch problems and secure more research funding. He concludes that m any of the structural and other changes that academic medicine's insti tutions must make may result in true improvements and help maintain th e validity of the term academic medical center in the future.