More than half of Kern physicians were
By Felix Adamo / The Californian
Dr. Brijesh Bhambi finds time to get in some running on the bike path. Bhambi, an interventional cardiologist at the Bakersfield Heart Hospital., was 16 years old when he entered an Indian medical school with the hopes of avoiding a life of poverty. Bhambi is one of the more than 600 Kern County doctors who graduated from a foreign medical school; that's more than half of the total doctors in Kern, according to California Medical Board data.
To estimate the percentage of foreign educated doctors practicing in Kern County and throughout California, The Californian merged the state Medical Board most recent databases of total doctors by county and total foreign educated doctors by county. Some of the individual data points from each database could be from slightly different time periods, but the Medical Board said this was the best, most recent data available.
To calculate board certification rates, we typed hundreds of local doctors names into the American Board of Medical Specialties website to see if they were board certified. medical schools supplying the most physicians to Kern County.
We obtained a list of recent residents and graduates from Kern Medical Center, the county only teaching hospital, and excluded them from the analysis since they may not have had time to complete board certification. post medical school exams and securing a training, or residency, spot in the South Bronx. Eventually he landed in Kern County, where he now works as an interventional cardiologist at the Bakersfield Heart Hospital.
Many local physicians have experienced a similar journey here. In fact, 57 percent of Kern County doctors attended medical school overseas, according to a Californian analysis of state Medical Board data. That consistent with other Central Valley counties but more than twice the national average of about 25 percent, and four to five times the amount in other California counties with similar total numbers of doctors such as Sonoma and Marin counties.
The high number of international medical graduates (IMGs) has played an instrumental role in providing much needed physicians to Kern County. Many IMGs also end up in primary care medicine, an important field that American trained doctors often bypass in favor of more lucrative specialties.
"They have helped us fill a void, bringing care to thousands of people who would have been without care had they not been there," said Stephen Schilling, CEO of local health clinic chain Clinica Sierra Vista.
But importing a physician workforce isn without challenges.
Culture clashes can arise between physicians and patients, especially in a place like Kern County where the top countries of doctor origination India and the Philippines don reflect a population nearly 50 percent Latino. counterparts.
Recruiting and hiring international physicians can be difficult without a clear system for determining which schools are the best.
"Some schools abroad are fabulous, and their students have high board passage rates and great scores," said Callie Langton, associate director of the Health Care Workforce Policy for the California Academy of Family Physicians. healthcare needs, doubts about their quality of care have persisted. In 2010, a study released by the peer reviewed journal Health Affairs attempted to clarify the competency question.
The study evaluated the outcomes of more than 240,000 patients hospitalized for heart problems. Foreign born physicians who trained abroad fared even better than their American trained counterparts when it came to death rates. (The study differentiated between foreign doctors who trained overseas and American doctors who attended medical school abroad, a group that had the worst patient outcomes, according to the report). doctor.
The Health Affairs report also vikingsofficialonlineshop.com/Teddy_Bridgewater_Jersey_Vikings looked at whether a physician is board certified in his or her specialty. After physicians attend medical school, they must complete at least three years of training in a specialty, or residency. Following that, the physician can take a test in that specialty to become board certified.
While this is voluntary, 80 to 85 percent of American doctors become board certified in an American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) member board, according to the organization. Among newer graduates, that number jumps to more than 87 percent, according to a 2011 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In Kern County, only about 70 percent of the 634 foreign trained physicians have ever received board certification, according to an exhaustive Californian review of ABMS physician records. That percentage, though, doesn tell the whole story. Certification rates varied dramatically depending on which foreign medical school Kern doctors attended.
Take the most common 10 foreign medical schools graduating Kern County doctors. The certification rate among those schools local physicians ranges from 33 to 93 percent, with an average of 64 percent. medical school graduates board certification rates range from 69 to 100 percent, with an average of 80 percent about the national average.
Among foreign schools, the Autonomous University of Guadalajara Faculty of Medicine has the lowest rate while Grant Medical College and University of Bombay in India and the University of the Philippines College of Medicine have the highest.
Dr. Roy Daug, a graduate of that Philippine school, said his competitive university instilled the importance of getting the highest certification available.