Med Schools Work To Lure Doctors

Tuesday, November 28th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

BOSTON (AP) â€” Harvard University and the University of California, San Francisco, hope to lure doctors back into the classroom by paying them enough to offset the time they spend away from patients.

Each school has committed about $10 million and is applying to major foundations for additional funds. If successful, the moves could mark a radical change in medical education, school officials said.

The programs are designed to counteract the economic pressure felt by doctors who double as professors and have less time to spend with revenue-generating patients, The Boston Sunday Globe reported. Support could range from $20,000 stipends to a quarter of a full professor's salary of around $200,000.

Perhaps the most radical part of the idea is simply to pay teachers for teaching, a rarity at most medical schools. Just 278 of Harvard Medical School's 5,463 full-time faculty receive direct compensation for teaching, the newspaper said.

Some medical experts feel the squeeze on doctors' income could erode the level of training for tomorrow's physicians.

``We are jeopardizing the quality of care our children and grandchildren will get,'' said Dr. Kenneth M. Ludmerer, a professor of medicine and history at Washington University.

Ludmerer blamed the crisis in large part on the drive for hospital efficiency under managed care.

Dr. Jo Shapiro, a head and neck surgeon at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston, said she enjoyed spending 10 hours each week designing and teaching a course at Harvard Medical School.

But the time spent on the course meant she couldn't see as many patients at her practice.

``I was actually at the point where I was going to lose money,'' Shapiro said. She told Harvard she could no longer run the course.

In addition to supplementing the income of doctors like Shapiro, the schools hope the programs will change the balance of prestige at universities which typically place greater emphasis on research and clinical ability than on classroom time.

``This really does alter the structure of the medical school in a very fundamental way,'' said Dr. Daniel Lowenstein, who came up with the idea at the University of California, San Francisco.

Lowenstein brought the idea to Harvard when he was hired as dean of medical education.