Johannes Vieweg M.D. Dean, Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Allopathic Medicine, Nova Southeastern University
The Covid-19 pandemic clearly exposed the national shortage of physicians and the need for reform in medical education and the delivery of health care in the U.S. As the 8th accredited Florida medical school awarding the M.D. degree, Nova Southeastern University’s Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Allopathic Medicine (NSU MD) has steadily advanced to prepare the next generation of physicians and to engage in life-saving research bringing hope to patients seeking treatment and cures. In February 2021, NSU MD was granted provisional accreditation by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, a major milestone attesting to the quality of our medical education program, moving it one step closer to full accreditation in 2023.
From its inception, NSU MD was created to do much more than train a skilled and diverse physician workforce. This medical college was built to serve as a preeminent state and national resource for catalyzing healthcare leadership, excellent clinical care, population health, and cutting-edge biomedical research. NSU’s emerging Academical Village, a six-acre development on the Davie/Fort Lauderdale campus, now houses a brand-new HCA hospital and medical office buildings, slated to open in September 2021. Aside from providing comprehensive health services, the hospital will also focus on medical education and will provide research opportunities and health innovations, thus creating a powerful trifecta of healthcare, education, and research that will be unsurpassed by any other health system in Broward County. NSU MD serves as the academic medicine anchor for the hospital, providing a nucleus for attracting doctors and other health-related industries, and triggering substantial economic expansion in the Greater Fort Lauderdale region.
NSU’s ultimate goal for the Academical Village is for it to become an international destination hub for patients, doctors, health workers, researchers, students, and industry leaders. NSU’s unique institutional setting, its rich canvas of facilities, educational resources, talented faculty, forward-thinking leadership, and community partnerships, coupled with Florida’s rapid population growth projected over the next decade, will create a one-of-a-kind opportunity to accelerate much-needed access to state-of-the-art, public healthcare services linked to NSU’s academic resources, all of which will support the general health, wellbeing, and quality of life of our local community, and far beyond.
As our medical College prepares for full accreditation status, our faculty remain laser-focused on further advancing the M.D. program’s educational quality standards and ensuring that our students have access to real-world clinical experiences. As part of that process, NSU MD is carefully evaluating the lessons learned during the pandemic and their implications for both teaching and learning in the classroom, small group, and clinical education settings, incorporating innovations wherever possible into our curriculum and daily practices.
As our faculty relentlessly pursue the core missions of research and development, they continue to collaborate with local communities, businesses, practices, and health organizations to advance our understanding of the socioeconomic, behavioral, and structural drivers of health, research that adopts a whole-person perspective, attentive to what patients eat, how they sleep, and where they live, learn and play. By studying relationships and the interactions patients have within their communities, we are able to recommend and introduce lifestyle interventions that promote healthy living and aging. More than 90% of U.S. health systems presently identify and address social determinants of health as an important strategic imperative, and 50% are planning to launch “Social Determinants of Health” programs. Building such a system perspective will drive critical features of our region such as access to healthcare services for underserved communities of Floridians, reducing fragmentation of care for everyone.
We, as a medical school, have a unique role to play, improving health outcomes with the use of data analytics, process engineering, and forecasting tools that will help us design a future, person-centered, multidisciplinary care model, that rewards value (results) at an affordable cost. Enabling the transition from volume-based to value-based healthcare through a deeper understanding and better management of the social determinants of health will be among the most important initiatives that NSU MD is leading, with the goal of building a distinct, community-driven population health strategy that will benefit our patients in unprecedented ways.
These strategic directions will establish NSU MD’s national identity as an innovative, forward-looking, and community-oriented medical school. They also proactively address the new imperatives that the Covid-19 pandemic has created. Utilizing digital technology, we can better protect our citizens, especially the elderly, and we can help retool the healthcare workforce to better prepare the State of Florida and our nation for future pandemics and other emerging health crises.
Most evident is the fact that NSU, with its new MD medical college, has the leadership, infrastructure, skill, and vision to develop a transformative medical education, research, and clinical enterprise in the post-pandemic era. A strong focus on quality, innovation, diversity, student-centeredness, and careful implementation of actions will allow NSU and its new medical school to reach their mutual goals of academic excellence in a culture that supports and benefits all partners. This is a big win for all.