Some New York medical schools are reacting angrily to news that New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corporation has signed a 10-year, $100-million contract to provide clinical training for students of a for-profit Caribbean medical school, The New York Times reported today. The deal will offer clerkships in the city’s 11 public hospitals to hundreds of students from St. George’s University School of Medicine on the island of Grenada.

The agreement was proposed by a longtime employee of the school who serves on the board of the health and hospitals corporation. Critics worry that the contract will make it harder for New York medical schools to compete for the city’s limited clerkship positions, in which third-and fourth-year medical students train alongside doctors. Those schools could be forced to raise tuition in order to compete, they argue. Some also contend that the city is favoring an institution with a more vocational than research-based curriculum and that accepts wealthy students who were rejected by schools in the United States (The Chronicle, October 28, 2005).

“This changes the whole dynamic from an academic relationship to a dollar-based relationship,” said Dr. Michael J. Reichgott, associate dean for clinical affairs and graduate medical education at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.

Daniel D. Ricciardi, the board member who proposed the contract, said he didn’t benefit financially from it. “Everybody’s saying there’s a conflict here, and it comes back to me. They’re disgruntled, jealous. A report was written on the school, and the judgment was made based on merit, not on political push.” —Katherine Mangan