One-of-a-Kind Residency Training Program Is Improving the Hospital’s Quality of Care While Encouraging New Physicians to Practice in the Community
Long Island Community Hospital has recently received full accreditation as a graduate medical education sponsoring institution from the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), becoming the only community hospital on Long Island to achieve this status.
The program, currently in its third year, will now include the full complement of 30 residents training in internal medicine and will graduate 10 residents each year. Medical students from St. George’s University and NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine, along with Physician Assistant students from SUNY Stony Brook School of Medicine, also rotate through the institution and contribute to the learning environment. Residents for the program were selected from over 3,000 applicants from around the country, and will focus their training in primary care, hospital medicine, and subspecialty care.
“Our residents participate in a variety of research and quality improvement programs here at our hospital and present their research at local, regional, and national meetings,” states Long Island Community Hospital President and CEO Richard T. Margulis. “This process, combined with the higher standards of a teaching environment, drives up the quality of our care services.”
While the residency program is only 22 months old, Long Island Community Hospital residents have already won a number of national awards at these meetings. The specialized training in internal medicine GME residency programs takes place over a three-year period. Residency is the final phase of the medical educational process, and a requirement for those who wish to practice medicine.
“Our residency program recruits new physicians who have an interest in teaching, research, and quality improvement,” according to Dr. Ravi Gupta, the hospital’s Chief Medical Information Officer & Residency Program Director. “It’s also good for our community as we hope that as these residents graduate the program, some will stay in the area and practice.”
The ACGME is responsible for accrediting all graduate medical education throughout the country. Only about 10 percent of hospitals nationally are “teaching” hospitals. In order to become accredited, there is a rigorous process of data analysis, curriculum development, and verification that the ACGME engages in. It also has very strict standards that all institutions and programs must adhere to in order to maintain and achieve accreditation. Typically, the process of accreditation is a multi-year process.
