Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Open Board of Directors Meeting
San Bernardino Community College District
114 S. Del Rosa Drive San Bernardino, CA 92408
Minutes
Present: Pete Aguilar, Dimitrios Alexiou, Don Averill, Deborah Barmack, Carole Beswick, Tom Brickley, Erin Brinker, Ken Coate, Ray Gonzales, Dick Hart, Mark Kaenel, Lowell King, Bill Lemann, Neil Macready, John Mirau, Lou Monville, Tomas Morales, Charlie Ng, Tom Nightingale, Steve PonTell, Bev Powell, John Prentice, Kristine Scott, Larry Sharp, Shelli Stockton, AJ Wilson and Ray Wolfe.
Guests: Dr. Mahendr Koch, Sue McKee, Vicky Ostermann, Jim Peterson, Frank Reyes, Gregory Young and field representative for Assemblyman Morrell.
Announcements: 1) Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) has been proposed for membership. Patty Senecal, Manager, Southern California Region & Infrastructure Issues would serve as their representative. Information regarding WSPA will be sent to the membership. 2) The Tippecanoe Groundbreaking ceremony held on August 29th was well attended by Inland Action members. Congressman Jerry Lewis attended. 3) Mobility 21 will hold their 11th Annual Transportation Summit on September 28, 2012 from 8-4p.m. at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim. Inland Action’s Deborah Barmack will be receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award and member Fran Inman will receive the Private Sector Leadership Award. Information on the summit will be e-mailed to members. 4) A reception to celebrate Inland Action’s 50th Anniversary is planned for Thursday, October 18, 2012 from 5:30-7:30p.m. at the San Bernardino International Airport in Hanger 763. More information will follow shortly.
M/S/P: Minutes of the July 24, 2012 meeting
Dr. Dick Hart introduced Dr. Roger Hadley, Dean, Loma Linda University School of Medicine.
Dr. Hadley discussed medical Resident specialty training and its relationship to healthy communities and a healthy economy.
Healthy Community
Residents play a vital role in the health care of those who most need it yet cannot afford it. Residents in our community are the single most important asset to the quality of our citizen’s health care. For more than 100 years resident education has successfully given high quality care to the uninsured and underinsured members of our community. They play a vital role by providing up to 80 hours/week of health care at the public and veteran’s hospitals and operate clinics for those without access to health care.
- Properly supervised Residency teaching provides a high level in the quality of care
- Care is cost effective
- $16/hour ($25/hour with benefits)
- Those in the Resident training program are typically “good citizens”
Healthy Economy
- Residents are salary earners (paid $45,000-50,000 per year plus benefits) where they train and work.
- They have stability in the community as they will remain for 3-7 years. Additionally they invest in the community ie: buy houses, take out loans etc.
- Those completing their training are very likely to stay in the community where they trained- studies show that every new doctor in the community brings an average of $2.5 million per year to the local economy.
The resident training program is as important as medical school in the quality of health care for a community (nationwide and locally). Residents are have many levels of supervision and are given progressively more responsibility during their hands-on training (typically 4 years or more).
Since the 1960s, Medicare has paid for a substantial portion of medical residency programs. Medicare placed a cap on funds allocated for resident education in 1996 due to a study that projected a surplus of 165,000 physicians by the year 2000. This prediction is far from reality and in the Inland Empire the shortage of doctors is already severe. The number of physicians available in the workforce is NOT dependent on the number of medical students. Workforce numbers are dependent on the number of residency positions.
The Inland Empire combined residency facilities currently have 700 in training and are only federally funded for 500. Loma Linda University Medical Center, for example, pays an added $10 million annually, as they have more residents in their program than the Medicare cap allows.
Some of the financial burden could be reduced by:
- Lifting the 1996 Medicare Cap
Onus is on the 30% of all patients with Medicare
- Allowing residents to bill for the services they provide (currently insurance companies do not pay for residents’ work)
Dr Hadley also commented that although we have outstanding health care services, we are losing out on a substantial market share from our own backyard. Studies have shown that approximately 16.8% of the areas medical care needs are taken out of the Inland Empire. The estimated loss of economy for this “outmigration” is $3 Billion annually.
A Q & A period followed
Meeting adjourned at 8:35 a.m.