The Committee of Interns and Residents is proud to announce the Maimonides/CIR Quality and Work Redesign Fellowship at Maimonides Medical Center, a preeminent academic hospital in the borough of Brooklyn and one of only 3 New York City Hospitals to be named by HealthGrades as a Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence. The fellowship was created as part of collaborative quality improvement work that the hospital and resident physician union began in 2011.

Through this intensive 12-month Maimonides/CIR fellowship, physicians will learn the science of quality improvement and patient safety and take on a leadership role as an agent of change on hospital-based clinical and administrative issues, system-based practice, and performance improvement. In addition, the Fellow can choose to enroll in Masters of Public Health (tuition paid) at Brooklyn College. Applications are being accepted through March 15th, 2012. Start date: July 1, 2012. The full application is available here. For more information please contact Vivian Fernandez at (718) 501-5204.

The 501(c)(3) organization, founded in 2007 on the occasion of CIR’s 50th anniversary, will sponsor residents and alumni to volunteer for one week each through Project Medishare, a highly regarded University of Miami program that sends medical professionals to provide healthcare services and training at the Hospital Bernard Mevs in Port-au-Prince.

Once accepted to volunteer by Project Medishare, PEI will contribute

• the $500 Medishare requires for roundtrip air travel between Miami and Port-au-Prince and food and lodging while in Haiti, and
• reimbursement of up to $600 to offset the cost of travel to Miami and hotel accommodations.

To find out more and register, click here.

WHAT IS IT LIKE IN HAITI TODAY?
There is still a tremendous need for medical help!

“What can I say about Haiti? It was tragic and wonderful at the same time.”
- Mark Petrovani, Family Medicine, Bronx-Lebanon Hospital

Since the devastating earthquake in Haiti in January 2010, forty CIR members and alumni have volunteered to deploy to Haiti for a week or more using personal leave time. Their moving stories can be seen on CIR’s Haiti Blog and on YouTube.

The need for medical relief, particularly from doctors, remains great. Three million Haitians (one-third of the country’s population) were directly affected by this devastating disaster. Thousands of families continue to live in tent cities with limited sanitary conditions and medical care. The outbreak of cholera has compounded the tragedy.

To learn more about the CIR Policy and Education Initiative, please visit www.cirpei.org.

Assemble with us this Thursday, February 16 at Bellevue Hospital. We will meet on the west side of 1st Avenue near East 27th Street at 12:45pm. (Nearest subway: #6 train to 28th St.) The press conference will begin at 1pm.

We’ll be highlighting new data showing that paid sick days would provide millions of dollars in savings annually for NYC hospitals on emergency room costs.

For more information, contact the New York Paid Leave Coalition at nyspaidfamilyleave@gmail.com.

Use hashtag #paidsickdaysnyc to tweet about the event.

♥♥ Patient Care Fund Party ♥♥
Friday, February 10, 2012
7:00-9:00pm

Pacific Coast Brewing Company
906 Washington St.
Oakland, CA 94607

Food and drinks sponsored by CIR. The Pacific Coast Brewing Company is located off the Oakland 12th Street/City Center BART stop in Old Town Oakland.  RSVP to Asella Blood-Donovan at ablood@cirseiu.org.

Industry experts said even more sales and consolidations were looming as hospitals brace for the financial consequences of the federal health care reform law — insuring more people while cutting costs — which will take effect in two years.

Kerry McKean Kelly, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Hospitals Association, said health care reform was driving a lot of the discussions about consolidation and partnerships. “There might be a single payment for an ‘episode of care’ that would be divided between home health aides, physicians, nursing homes, hospitals,” she said.

Continue reading at nj.com

The New Jersey Senate and Assembly higher education committees plan hearings into the proposed merger of Rutgers University in Camden with Rowan University as part of a reorganization of the state’s public institutions of higher education.

The proposal has generated protests from Rutgers-Camden faculty, alumni and students.

“We cannot look to improve one aspect of New Jersey’s higher education system at the expense of another,” said Assemblywoman Celeste Riley, D-3rd, who represents Gloucester, Salem and Cumberland counties and chairs the Assembly’s higher education committee.

“For many, the well-respected name of Rutgers-Camden is important, and this merger plan must be an equal joining of these institutions, not the elimination of one in favor of another.

“This plan has the potential to be a real plus for New Jersey, but only if it’s done correctly. I expect to be holding hearings on this plan, and I look forward to the administration detailing exactly how this merger would be implemented,” Riley said.

Sen. Sandra Cunningham, D-31st of Hudson County, chairwoman of the Senate higher education committee, also plans hearings, beginning Monday.

The reorganization, proposed by a study commission from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and endorsed last week by Gov. Chris Christie, has a goal of creating major research institutions in Camden as well as New Brunswick, where Rutgers is headquartered, and Newark.

Continue reading at phillyburbs.com

Gov. Chris Christie unveiled a sweeping plan last week to overhaul New Jersey’s university system, with the aim of capturing more grant money at a time when higher education is severely underfunded. Rowan, a South Jersey state college, would take over the Camden campus of Rutgers, including its law and business schools. The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey would be broken up, and its high-profile medical school awarded to Rutgers.

Robert Campbell, a member of the governor’s special task force and a former Johnson & Johnson executive, thinks this is a big win for the state. He recently spoke with Star-Ledger editorial writer Julie O’Connor.

Q. What do you see as the strongest arguments for this plan?

A. We’ve long been talking about Rutgers going from good to great since (former Gov. Tom) Kean’s task force on higher education two years ago. Merging it with the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Cancer Institute of New Jersey and School of Public Health could bring in a lot more research dollars. Rutgers would be viewed in a different way by corporate and government funders.

Grants turn into jobs — and, hopefully, into products eventually. Being that New Jersey is the pharmaceutical center of the country, in the long run, these grants should provide plenty of opportunities in biomedical research and health sciences.

This plan is also good for South Jersey. … It puts Rowan on a new level and it becomes part of a comprehensive university, interconnected with other pieces rather than just being a branch of Rutgers. If Rowan wants to expand in the future, having that base of what was Rutgers provides an anchor.

Q. Do you have any concerns about it?

A. Not about the plan. But I would expect there’s going to be push-back from people who would rather see things a different way.

Q. What about the fate of University Hospital?

A. University Hospital is extremely important to Newark and the state. We feel it will benefit from being operated separately from the university, where it will have its own focus and be improved by private management that has experience with broader health care systems. The state will still have to come up with some funding; there’s no doubt about that. The hospital’s equipment andinfrastructure is badly in need of investment.

Q. Are you worried that the Rutgers board of trustees won’t approve of this plan, if it means giving up Rutgers-Camden?

A. Worry isn’t the word. My feeling is, we’ve put forward our recommendations. I don’t know where Rutgers will come down on it, but I would hope they’d approve it.

Q. Students and staff at Rutgers-Camden feel they’re getting the short shrift by merging with Rowan, a lesser-known, smaller college. What’s your take?

A. Our feeling was that some mechanism has to be put in the works, so that anybody who is currently at Rutgers-Camden can finish out their schooling with a Rutgers degree. New people coming in will be making a decision as to whether that’s where they want to be.

Q. Some argue the law school in Camden is profitable to Rutgers. Why lose it in exchange for a medical school?

A. Rutgers now has two law schools, so it will still have a law school. What we’re doing is adding to Rutgers a medical school.

Q. Attempts to revamp New Jersey’s higher-ed system have failed in the past. What makes this time any different?

A. The answer from Gov. Christie was that it’s going to be different because he is governor. I think leadership is extremely important. I also think this plan is different because it’s not a one-size-fits-all, like the 2002 plan under former Gov. (James E. ) McGreevey. That was creating three entirely new, comprehensive universities.

Q. What’s the next step?

A. Gov. Christie has to decide how he’s going to present this. He’s accepted the report from the committee and said he plans to submit an executive reorganization plan to the Legislature. I’m optimistic about it. There are already implementation teams established for the merger between Robert Wood Johnson and Rutgers. I think there might be some fine-tuning, but this has a strong basis to move forward.

Read the original article on NJ.com

At 11am at a press conference in Trenton, Governor Christie gave his full support to the new recommendations outlined in the final report of the UMDNJ Advisory Committee.