Listen to the back and forth between Summa Health and Summit Emergency Associates as their relationship of three decades fell apart at the end of last year, and there was a steady consensus: The emergency medicine residency program was highly regarded nationally and benefited the larger Akron community.
Now all of that appears at risk. A week ago, the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education removed its accreditation of the residency program at Summa. Residents face a difficult limbo. If Summa will appeal the decision, the prospect remains: Come July 1, the program could cease, barred from adding new residents.
US Acute Care Solutions, the new physician team in the emergency department, says it wants to keep the residency program. It also knows, as Dominic Bagnoli, the chief executive, told Amanda Garrett of the Beacon Journal, “the ED can be run without residents.” Acute Care Solutions staffs 170 hospitals. Just 10 have residency programs.
What a shame it would be to lose something so valuable. The residency program has worked as a feeder system. Medical students, often from the Northeast Ohio Medical University, gain training and, in many cases, choose to remain here. That translates into a core of strong physicians, Akron facing to a lesser degree the tough competition otherwise to recruit doctors.
Neither should the prestige element be overlooked, reputation making a distinct contribution to quality. So, the hope is, the leadership at Summa will find a way to sustain the residency program at the necessary high level.
It is chilling to read, via the reporting of Amanda Garrett and Betty Lin-Fisher, that a former president of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine views the loss of accreditation as “a death penalty” for the residency program.
Dominic Bagnoli sees an “easy solution.” He argues that the hiring of a handful of doctors from Summit Emergency Associates would go far in addressing the accreditation concerns, immediately adding required credentials. He thinks sitting down together would prove productive for both sides. Difficult is overcoming the hard feelings.
No question, Summit Emergency Associates shares responsibility for the breakdown in relations that landed Summa in this debacle. Yet, as the recent resignation of Thomas Malone reinforced, this has been a management failure. Malone, other administrators and the board set in motion what resulted in the loss of accreditation.
What is the Summa leadership willing to do to address the concerns of the accreditation council in an effort to preserve a residency program so many at Summa long have viewed as an asset to the health system? After all, the many initiatives launched in the worthy pursuit of population health did not include seeing the collapse of the well-respected residency program in emergency medicine.