In what has been described as a very fierce turf battle rooted in the growing pressures on the medical profession and academia, Caribbean offshore medical schools say they are increasingly attacked by New York medical schools.
The deans of the Caribbean schools charge that New York State's 16 medical schools have begun an aggressive campaign to persuade the New York State Board of Regents to make it harder, if not impossible, for Caribbean and other foreign schools to use New York hospitals as extensions of their own campuses.
The changes, if approved, could put at least some of the Caribbean schools in jeopardy, their deans said, because their small islands lack the hospitals to provide the hands-on training that a doctor needs to be licensed in the United States.
Medical experts here also said that the dispute has far-reaching implications for medical education and the licensing of physicians across the United Sates.
More than 42,000 students apply to medical schools in the United States every year, with only about 18,600 matriculating, leaving some of those, who are rejected, to look to foreign schools.
Graduates of foreign medical schools in the Caribbean and elsewhere constitute more than a quarter of the residents in United States hospitals.
With experts predicting a shortage of 90,000 doctors in the United States by 2020, the defenders of these schools say that they fill a need because their graduates are more likely than their American-trained peers to go into primary and family care, rather than into higher-paying specialities, like surgery.
Medical experts say New York has been particularly affected by the influx because it trains more medical students and residents -- fledgling doctors who have just graduated from medical school — than any other state.
The New York medical school deans say that they want to expand their own enrolment to fill the looming shortage, but claim that their ability to do so is impeded by competition with the Caribbean schools for clinical training slots in New York hospitals.
"These are designed to be for-profit education mills to train students to pass the boards, which is all they need to get a licence," said Dr Michael J Reichgott, a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York.
But Charles Modica, chancellor of St George's University in Grenada, whose first class started studying in 1977, making it one of the oldest in the Caribbean, said the New York deans were simply afraid of competition.
"It's basically a situation where the New York State deans just can't hold their noses high enough up in the air, and I think it's disgraceful," he told reporters here.
"If the domestic schools felt we were taking opportunities away from their students, if they can specifically tell us what location we were taking them away from — that question was never answered," said Dr Nancy Perri, chief academic officer at Ross University in Dominica.
Foreign schools send to New York about 2,200 students, more than 90 per cent of them from the Caribbean, according to New York health officials.
St George's alone sends about 1,000 students, many through a 10-year, US$100-million contract with the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs public hospitals.
New York City hospital officials have defended the contract with St George's as a way of getting students into hospitals in poor neighbourhoods that have been shunned by New York schools.
Once they have done their clinical training in those hospitals, the students often return as residents and then as full-fledged attending physicians, officials said.
The deans of the Caribbean schools charge that New York State's 16 medical schools have begun an aggressive campaign to persuade the New York State Board of Regents to make it harder, if not impossible, for Caribbean and other foreign schools to use New York hospitals as extensions of their own campuses.
The changes, if approved, could put at least some of the Caribbean schools in jeopardy, their deans said, because their small islands lack the hospitals to provide the hands-on training that a doctor needs to be licensed in the United States.
Medical experts here also said that the dispute has far-reaching implications for medical education and the licensing of physicians across the United Sates.
More than 42,000 students apply to medical schools in the United States every year, with only about 18,600 matriculating, leaving some of those, who are rejected, to look to foreign schools.
Graduates of foreign medical schools in the Caribbean and elsewhere constitute more than a quarter of the residents in United States hospitals.
With experts predicting a shortage of 90,000 doctors in the United States by 2020, the defenders of these schools say that they fill a need because their graduates are more likely than their American-trained peers to go into primary and family care, rather than into higher-paying specialities, like surgery.
Medical experts say New York has been particularly affected by the influx because it trains more medical students and residents -- fledgling doctors who have just graduated from medical school — than any other state.
The New York medical school deans say that they want to expand their own enrolment to fill the looming shortage, but claim that their ability to do so is impeded by competition with the Caribbean schools for clinical training slots in New York hospitals.
"These are designed to be for-profit education mills to train students to pass the boards, which is all they need to get a licence," said Dr Michael J Reichgott, a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York.
But Charles Modica, chancellor of St George's University in Grenada, whose first class started studying in 1977, making it one of the oldest in the Caribbean, said the New York deans were simply afraid of competition.
"It's basically a situation where the New York State deans just can't hold their noses high enough up in the air, and I think it's disgraceful," he told reporters here.
"If the domestic schools felt we were taking opportunities away from their students, if they can specifically tell us what location we were taking them away from — that question was never answered," said Dr Nancy Perri, chief academic officer at Ross University in Dominica.
Foreign schools send to New York about 2,200 students, more than 90 per cent of them from the Caribbean, according to New York health officials.
St George's alone sends about 1,000 students, many through a 10-year, US$100-million contract with the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs public hospitals.
New York City hospital officials have defended the contract with St George's as a way of getting students into hospitals in poor neighbourhoods that have been shunned by New York schools.
Once they have done their clinical training in those hospitals, the students often return as residents and then as full-fledged attending physicians, officials said.
