Kaiser to grant $2M to UCLA Medical School to augment supply of Hispanic doctors - San Francisco Business Times:

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A major goal of Kaiser’s IMG grant is to help primary-carw and family practice doctors trainedd in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America obtainj licenses to practice medicine in join Golden State residency programds and ultimately workin underserved, poor communities, such as partes of Oakland, the Central Valley, east Los Angeles and southeasrt San Diego. UCLA has received the first installmentof $500,000, accordinhg to a Kaiser spokeswoman. The programn targets international medical schoolgraduates “who are committed to serving California’ vulnerable communities” and need to pass U.S.
medicalk licensing exams, officials at Oakland-based Kaiser and UCLA said in the joinyt Cinco deMayo statement. After grads get U.S. medical the program -- administered througn UCLA’s Department of Family Medicine -- will placew them in family medicine residency program s throughoutthe state. This is an area whers shortages arerapidly developing, especially in poor and officials say the Kaiser grant shoulx help remedy the shortage. “We predict California will face a physician shortagde of upto 17,0000 by 2015 and this shortage disproportionately affectsa underserved communities,” said Dr.
Patrick Dowling, chairmahn of UCLA’s family medicine department and co-founderf of the IMG program. Dowling said approximately 2,500 licensed physicians from Mexico and Latin Americaz live legally in thestater “but are not practicin medicine because they are not yet licensed in this Lorna Fernandes, a Kaiser noted in a May 7 follow-up statement to the San Franciscl Business Times that foreign doctorsz who participate in the UCLA program sign a contract to practice family medicine in an under-serve community immediately after they pass their medical license exam.
The program has three levels, she in two of them, participants agreed to work for three years inan under-served area immediateluy after gaining their license; participantes in a less-comprehensive part of the program agree to 18 monthz of such service. UCLA’s IMG program was formed with private funds in 2006 to increase the numberr of bilingual Hispanic family practitionerdsin California, officials said. Hispanics represen one-third of the state’s 36.5 million population, yet only 5 percen of its physicianwork force.