The medical students who wrote the commentary “UC sets poor example for med students” (Viewpoints, Feb. 2) and I agree on quite a few things.<\/p>\n
The state of California, thanks to the Legislature’s wild spending, has brought about draconian cuts to many state services, including higher education. The fees that medical students must shoulder are much greater than just a few years ago. While the bonuses to hospital executives may have been part of the contract negotiations for meeting certain goals, the timing was awkward, and perhaps these bonuses could have been delayed until the general state financial picture cleared. <\/p>\n
Nevertheless, some of the students’ statements were incorrect. The UC Davis Medical Center no longer has a contract with Sacramento County for indigent care, not because of reduced funding, but because the county is no longer willing to pay anything for these services. The medical center never turns away urgent cases from their emergency room, despite the lack of reimbursement that continues. <\/p>\n
As to the costs of campus construction, the new hospital pavilion at the medical center will provide much-needed expanded and modern emergency room facilities that a Level 1 trauma center needs and deserves for proper patient care. The new operating rooms will relieve a chronic lack of space for urgent as well as scheduled cases, and additional intensive-care beds will allow the hospital to expand its care for Sacramento and neighboring communities. <\/p>\n
As an interventional neuroradiologist, I sometimes encounter full intensive-care units with no room to accept referral patients from other counties for specialized care of brain vascular disorders. The new Telehealth Education Center, to be built on the Sacramento campus, is partly funded by federal grants. This center will expand the capabilities of the medical center to provide routine as well as specialty diagnostic services to underserved rural communities. <\/p>\n
Finally, most of the physicians are not “tenured.” The latter positions get some funds from the school of medicine, from the UC regents and the state, but the majority of monies for salaries come from revenue that the medical center brings in the door. Our salaries are about average for California universities but are much below the private community rates. Still, professors stay at the medical center in order to enjoy the teaching and research atmosphere that this medical center offers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The medical students who wrote the commentary “UC sets poor example for med students” (Viewpoints, Feb. 2) and I agree on quite a few things. The state of California, thanks to the Legislature’s wild spending, has brought about draconian cuts to many state services, including higher education. The fees that medical students must shoulder are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}