AAMC president and CEO speaks at School of Medicine

A packed Blue Auditorium listened as Dr. Jordan Cohen spoke of the special challenges facing academic medicine in the new century. Jordan Cohen, MD, president and chief executive officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), was the keynote speaker at this year’s Robert E. Mack Lecture. Drawing upon his more than 40 years of experience, including his current role as the nation’s chief advocate for academic medicine, Dr. Cohen analyzed the current state of affairs in the medical community and set a course of success for academic medical centers and teaching hospitals.

Dr. Cohen opened his remarks by commenting on the reverence with which teaching institutions are viewed in the medical community. “Academic medicine is acknowledged to be the benchmark for quality care in this country and throughout the world.” He stressed the importance of institutions like the School of Medicine and its affiliated institutions in providing a much-needed “safety net” for the uninsured, noting that, “Academic medical centers and major teaching hospitals make up roughly six percent of the non-federal, acute-care institutions in the United States, yet they provide literally 50 percent of the uncompensated care in this country.”

In noting the need to close the broadening diversity gap between medicine and those it serves, Dr. Cohen commended the school for its role in fostering a multi-cultural medical community. “We need to close what I would consider an appalling diversity gap. I wish that you [Wayne State University] could clone yourselves in some way that would allow this commitment to be more broadly distributed.”

Dr. Cohen stressed that government agencies and insurance providers should not be relied upon to find solutions to the various problems facing the current health care system. We must look instead to the health care community itself and, more specifically, to the academic medical community, he said. Dr. Cohen cited academic medicine’s tradition of leadership; its commitment to quality care; and its core purpose of improving individual and community health, rather than securing financial profit.

To the delight of Dr. Cohen and School of Medicine Associate Dean Dr. Robert Frank, the audience consisted of a good number of medical students. “I was pleased to see so many of our students on hand to hear Dr. Cohen’s message,” said Dr. Frank. “He has done a lot to support the mission of the school and academic medicine in general.”

The Robert E. Mack, MD, Lecture is sponsored by the Wayne State University School of Medicine to promote education and continuing discussion of administrative and management issues in academic medicine. Dr. Mack is the former WSU associate dean for medical center relations and senior vice president for medical and educational affairs for the Detroit Medical Center.  He also served as president of Hutzel Hospital and DMC senior vice president for medical affairs. A professor of internal medicine, Dr. Mack has helped shape policy and regulation related to medical education.