‘ObamaCare’ impact to be discussed by UB medical students, residents, faculty, physicians

BUFFALO, N.Y. – “It’s going to change everyone’s career and no one is quite sure what will happen.”

That’s how Philip L. Glick, MD (@glicklab), vice chair of surgery and professor of surgery, pediatrics and gynecology-obstetrics at the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, describes the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as “ObamaCare.”

To better understand the ACA, Glick, who also has an MBA and a faculty appointment in the UB School of Management, will hold an early morning Grand Rounds for UB medical students, residents, faculty and practicing physicians titled “#Obamacare: How Will the Affordable Care Act  (#ACA) Affect You, Your Training (#GME), Your Career (#CiM) and Your Patients?”

Media are invited to attend.

It will be held Feb. 14 from 6:45-8 a.m. in the Swift Auditorium, reachable through the lobby of Buffalo General Medical Center, 100 High St., Buffalo.

The meeting also will examine how social media (#HCSM) can help the physician community better understand and deal with the effects of the ACA. It is recommended that all attendees have real-time access to the Web and to a Twitter account via laptop or mobile device.

“The ACA is going to be a paradigm shift for every physician in practice,” says Glick. “The careers of our medical students and residents are going to be rocked by this. By the time they finish their training and residencies, the ACA will be in place.  We’re all going to feel this on a daily basis.”

Glick was motivated to hold Grand Rounds on the ACA because of the dramatic changes going on among the medical student and resident populations and the realization that those changes will be further complicated by the ACA.

“When I was in medical school in the 1970s, people went to med school because of their passion and then picked a specialty because of their interests,” says Glick. “Now, there are forces, such as debt load, demographics, professionalism and others that are causing students and residents to make decisions more pragmatically. They’re choosing specialties using different considerations than we used 10, 20 or 30 years ago.

“Right now, 80 percent of residents who are finishing up their residencies are doing specialty work,” he says. “They are being turned away from primary care for financial, personal and professional reasons.”

However, says Glick, the additional 30 million to 60 million people whom the ACA will bring into the health care system will challenge a system already seeing primary care doctor shortages in most areas. He notes that while the ACA increases the number of training positions for such primary care residencies as pediatrics, internal medicine and family medicine, paradoxically most of these trainees are doing subspecialty training and not primary care.

“They’re about to go out into this world where more primary care doctors are needed but what if they’re $100,000 or more in debt and they see that primary care doctors don’t get reimbursed properly? Our students need to know what the facts are.”

UB students, residents and faculty who plan to attend, and those who want to follow the discussion on Twitter, should read background materials recommended by Glick; the list is available at http://glicklab.blogspot.com/.

The course’s Twitter thread is being followed at @UBSurgery. Participants can use this handle to provide input. The course hashtag is #UBSurgery. Other relevant hashtags are: @ObamaCare, #ACA, #GME (graduate medical education), #CiM (career in medicine), #HCR (health care reform), #HCSM (health care and social media), #SoMe (social media), #SoMed (social media in medical education), #advocacy and #UBSMB (UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences).