AAMC President Lauds the "New Excellence" in Academic Medicine

Denver, Colo., November 6, 2011—As the U.S. health system undergoes substantial change, the nation’s medical schools and teaching hospitals are breaking free of the tyranny of national rankings systems and demonstrating a “new excellence” through multiple pathways, AAMC President and CEO Darrell G. Kirch, M.D., said in his annual address at the association’s 122nd annual meeting. Speaking to nearly 4,000 academic medicine leaders who attended the meeting in Denver, Kirch said “the new excellence is not about size, growth, or public relations. It is about locally defined commitments to fulfilling an institution’s specific mission and demonstrating real outcomes from those commitments.” Examples of the “new excellence” include redesigning and broadening the medical school admissions process to assess applicants’ pre-professional attributes through new approaches, such as the “Multiple Mini-Interview” and other new tools. Kirch praised the use of emerging technology to enhance learning and assess competence, as well as greater interprofessional education. “We cannot aspire to team-based care in the clinical setting while educating different health professions in isolated silos,” Kirch said. Read the address online.