Health maintenance organizations and medical education: breaking the barriers

Academic medical centers (AMCs) are under pressure to increase ambulatory medical education, but their capacity for such teaching is limited. Health maintenance organizations (HMOs) are a large and growing institutional setting that could participate in clinical education. Until now, relatively few HMOs and AMCs have reached agreements about teaching, because traditional suspicions have blocked collaboration. Responding to a case prepared as the basis of discussion, about 450 academics and HMO medical directors explored the barriers to and incentives for cooperation between AMCs and HMOs in clinical education. The two groups identified different issues as barriers to collaboration, leaving considerable room to negotiate agreements. AMCs, especially, need to be prepared to offer meaningful academic and financial inducements to attract HMOs to participate in teaching.