Reporter Volume 25, No.15 February 3, 1994

John P. Naughton, UB vice president for clinical affairs and dean of
the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, testified Jan. 26
before the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources in
Washington.
	Naughton testified on the consortium approach to graduate
medical education, the approach endorsed in a not-yet-released report
from the national Council on Graduate Medical Education, and the
arrangement employed by UB's medical school for more than 10 years to
train resident physicians in Western New York.
	The Graduate Medical Dental Education Consortium of Buffalo,
of which Naughton is chair, is composed of the directors of the area's
eight teaching hospitals, directors of each residency program,
residents, and the dean of the UB School of Dental Medicine.
	The consortium, considered a model for the way health-care
institutions will function in the future, has created a united front
to provide quality health care while cutting costs.
	Among its accomplishments are:
	n  A highly-regarded $5 million demonstration project
involving the hospitals, third-party payors and the medical school
designed to raise the percentage of resident physicians entering
primary care fields to 50 percent by 1994. The project is funding a
Primary Care Initiative that is actively recruiting residents into
primary-care fields, developing teaching sites in the community,
creating a primary-care leadership training track within the medical
school, designing a teaching-effectiveness program for primary-care
faculty, and funding and encouraging research in primary-care fields.
	n A jointly-financed fiber-optic "information super highway"
linking consortium members, laying the groundwork for shared patient
records, full member access to computerized teaching and diagnostic
tools, medical databases, and video consulting. The goal is to link
all hospitals, clinics and health-care institutions in the region
within 10 years.
	n  Comprehensive-care networks in several fields between
formerly competing hospitals.
	n  Combined purchasing agreements.