Scottsdale,
Ariz. - The Tulane University Health Sciences Center has announced a plan to continue the education of its medical students and residents. The Tulane University School of Medicine has relocated to Houston, Texas, where it will use the academic facilities of Baylor College of Medicine and University of Texas Medical School at Houston for preclinical courses.
A newly formed Alliance of South Texas Academic Health Centers comprised of the two medical schools in Houston, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and Texas A&M; University System Health Science Center College of Medicine, are working with the leadership at Tulane to accommodate the clinical education for medical students.
Tulane University leadership is working to have its medical students placed in classrooms by Sept. 26 and medical residents placed in new program locations by Oct. 1. Additional details will be provided on the Tulane University School of Medicine Web site on or before Sept. 15.
The Association of Schools of Public Health is facilitating placement of Tulane's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine students at other accredited schools of public health.
Louisiana State University at New Orleans School of Medicine Dean Larry Hollier, M.D., has held conference calls with students to inform them of the school's plans for continuation of their medical education.
First- and second-year students will use classroom space in the new Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge. All clinical placements for third- and fourth-year students are complete; existing clinical teaching sites were able to accommodate students who had to be shifted from sites damaged by the hurricane.
Housing needs are not finalized, but school officials are bringing in 500 trailers to accommodate students and faculty.
School administrators plan to move classes and rotations back to New Orleans by January 2006 as the infrastructure permits and work to arrange appropriate housing.
The
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has informed the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) that teaching hospitals that take on residents displaced by the hurricane will receive temporary adjustments to their Medicare resident caps if the addition of those displaced residents causes the hospital to exceed its cap.
According to CMS, graduate medical education payments "will be made to the hospital in which the residents are training.
The hospital in which the residents are training must document that the resident is training there because they are unable to train at their original teaching hospital because of the disaster."
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