Last year, IU Health donated $400 million at the IU School of Medicine. Dr. Jay L. Hess, dean of the medical school, said the funds will be distributed over three years and across multiple projects, including support for residency and scholarship opportunities in hopes more graduates decide to work in Indiana in health care and academia. roles, according to a Herald-Times article.
With the new funds, the medical school can bolster its iDREAM program — a program that aims to increase diversity among residents heading into academic careers in medicine. A third of the money, he said, will be used to recruit department professors in fields such as surgery, radiology and pathology. Hess said in the article that the School of Medicine will also expand research to help treat disease.
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Christina Griffiths, spokesperson for the IU School of Medicine, said in an email that since IU Health was founded in 1997, she has had a partnership with the medical school.
“Many of our faculty at IU School of Medicine are also employed by IU Health, where they provide clinical care to patients,” she said in an email. “Our students complete clinical rotations at various IU Health hospitals across the state.”
Since IU Health regularly provides funds to the school, she said this grant replaces what would have been awarded over the next three years. Griffiths said the funds will also be used to expand the current MD/Ph.D. program and support services for current medical students in terms of scholarships, mental health services and academic counseling. Funds saved for research will go towards renovating laboratories and infrastructure for clinical trials.
“As the nation’s largest medical school, we look forward to continuing our work in providing high-quality medical education to students, residents and fellows,” Griffiths said in an email. “We will also continue to be a world leader in Alzheimer’s disease, personalized medicine, traumatic brain injury, LGBTQ+ health, and many other areas of research.”
Lisa Tellus, another IU Health spokeswoman, said in an email that the $400 million represents her commitment to supporting the school’s mission and partnership.
“To have the best doctors in the country and to give Hoosiers access to cutting-edge medicine, we support IUSM’s education and research mission, including recruitment, diversity, equity and l ‘inclusion,” Tellus said in the email.
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According to a WFYI article, Indiana has the seventh highest hospital spending in the nation. The article attributed the finding to a RAND 4.0 studywho also said the Hoosiers pay nearly 300% more than Medicare pays for the same services.
By 2025, IU Health said it is committed to bringing health care costs down to national averages. Despite inflationary pressures, Tellus said in an email, the company has completed the first year of its affordability plan and will continue to work on reducing prices.
She said in an email that he received a five-star rating for price transparency according to the Price Transparency Scorecard conducted by Turquoise Health, a health technology company.
“While there is no single solution to health care costs, providers, insurers, regulators and legislators must work together to ensure that all Hoosiers have affordable access to high levels of care. quality,” Tellus said in an email.
Matt Bell, chief policy strategist at Hoosiers for Affordable Healthcare, said H4AC is working to push for policy reform on the price of hospital care for Hoosiers. The coalition was founded in 2019, he said, in response to the results of the RAND 3.0 study. At the time, it showed that Indiana had the sixth most expensive hospital in the country.
Over the next three years, he said they continued to push for legislative policies that would help reduce the cost of care in Indiana. Upon learning of the RAND 4.0 study, Bell said H4AC was working to bring attention to the issue and increase its digital footprint by reaching out to people across the state.
“IU Health has probably been the most responsive health system in the state to its credit,” Bell said.
He said IU Health had announced its commitment to lower its prices to the national average by 2025. They were one of the only hospitals in the country to make that kind of commitment.
“We certainly appreciate the leadership shown by our state’s largest health care system,” Bell said. “We want others to follow them as a market leader.”
He said H4AC’s relationship with hospitals can sometimes be contentious, as the organization always tries to preserve Hoosiers’ money rather than the hospitals’ cash reserves.
In the long term, Bell said he believes these funds could be put to better use if returned to patients.
“That said, IU School of Medicine is a tremendous academic institution,” Bell said. “We have a low number of physicians per capita in Indiana, and the IU School of Medicine will be key to meeting that need.”
However, there has been no public acknowledgment of the record donation so far, some 11 months after the donation, raising questions, he said.
IU Health has built up a reserve fund 50% larger than the Indiana state’s cash reserves, he said, supporting all ongoing state operations.
Bell said the girth of the overweights that IU Health has built protects her and protects her from any long-term concerns.