“We have a hard time recruiting new doctors,” Glasser said. “Usually Wayne State doctors come from (metro Detroit) and want to return here. We want to nurture them in outpatient care while they are here and hopefully they will return.”
On the other hand, Wayne State students will have the opportunity to train with doctors who practice in a patient-centered care model. They will learn to treat patients along a continuum of care from wellness and prevention through to chronic and acute illness and injury.
MHP is the first of several expected new affiliations Schweitzer said will be announced in the coming months and the first with a private medical group.
The Wayne State medical school also rotates medical students through its affiliated Wayne Health, an academic multispecialty group, and Wayne Pediatrics, a newly formed single specialty group.
While Schweitzer said Wayne State has improved its relationship with DMC over the past year, where the majority of WSU’s students train, he said as Wayne State moves toward more outpatient clerkships it will reduce the number of overall rotations at DMC.
“The experience we had (with DMC the past several years with Central Michigan University replacing WSU at Children’s Hospital) caused us to reappraise how we teach medical students,” he said. “We have reallocated more of our students to outpatient” (rotations). We will have fewer Wayne State students at DMC, but not for pediatrics.”
In the past, Schweitzer said WSU might have allocated more time for pediatric rotations than necessary for medical students wishing to specialize in other disciplines.
“If you’re a medical student, and you spend a third of your clerkship doing pediatric neurosurgery, and you’re going to be a dermatologist or do cardiology, is that a viable educational experience for you?” Schweitzer said.
But Schweitzer also said Wayne State needs more medical education partners because it also plans to slightly increase its class size over time. Its average class size is 300 students, but this year the medical school will admit 305 students to increase its under represented minorities in medicine, he said.
“We just need more training opportunities. The intention is not to disengage from the DMC in my conversation with the leadership. We’re married to them,” he said. “We’ve been married for a long time, and for the foreseeable future we’re going to be married, and married couples have their ups and downs. Now it’s a bit of an up, and we have a good working relationship with them.”
Besides DMC, Wayne State has affiliations with hospitals that include Ascension St. John Hospital, Beaumont Hospital Dearborn, Henry Ford Hospital, McLaren Macomb Hospital, McLaren Oakland in Pontiac, McLaren Port Huron Hospital, McLaren St. Luke’s in Toledo, the John D. Dingell VA Hospital, St. Joseph Mercy Oakland and St. Joseph Mercy Livonia.
