Bringing the future home - Looking to the Future

Community Service

Helping those in need

The medical school is committed to providing critically needed health programs for patients who otherwise would go without.

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Almost one in five Georgians under the age of 65 has no health insurance, despite the fact that more than two-thirds of these are either full-time employees or dependents of these employees. A disproportionate share of those with the most catastrophic and expensive medical problems in Georgia arrive at or are referred to facilities where Emory physicians will provide their care.
     In 2005-2006, physicians at The Emory Clinic, Emory University Hospital, Emory Crawford Long Hospital, Emory Children's Center, and Wesley Woods Center provided almost $71 million in charity care, a 7% increase over the previous year. This includes indigent care provided to patients without resources or health insurance, even Medicaid/Medicare, and catastrophic care provided to patients who may have some coverage but for whom paying health care bills would be a life-shattering hardship.
     The hundreds of physicians practicing in Emory's affiliated hospitals (Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston, Grady Memorial Hospital, and Veterans Affairs Medical Center) also provided millions of dollars in unreimbursed care. Such care is essential to the medical school's commitment to maintaining critically needed health programs for patients of all ages who otherwise would go without-but it doesn't pay very well.
     For example, Emory medical faculty and residents make up 85% of physicians at Grady Memorial Hospital, whose mission includes providing care to the uninsured citizens of Atlanta's Fulton and DeKalb counties. (Emory shares Grady coverage with faculty and residents at Morehouse School of Medicine.) Grady struggles to keep up with growing numbers of the uninsured, while its budget remains flat. The uncompensated care provided by Emory medical school physicians at Grady Hospital totaled $24.7 million during fiscal year 2005-2006, up $2.7 million from the previous year. When Emory physicians do receive reimbursement for services to Grady patients who have coverage, these funds are invested back into Grady via the Emory Medical Care Foundation (EMCF). In fiscal year 2005-2006, the EMCF provided $35.1 million to improve services at Grady.
     Thanks to Emory physicians, patients seen at Grady receive extraordinary care and can benefit from numerous efforts designed to meet the changing needs of society, including diabetes and pregnancy care programs for Spanish-speaking patients and an international clinic able to handle problems of newly arrived immigrants.
     Grady's Infectious Disease Program (IDP), established by Emory physicians in the mid-1980s, was selected by the University HealthSystem Consortium as one of the nation's top three HIV/AIDS outpatient clinics. The IDP served more than 4,000 men, women, adolescents, and children last year, a high figure even for a major city.

Emory's role at Grady Hospital means that these patients have access to some of the best care anywhere.

Sharing knowledge
Emory physicians are tireless educators, not just of medical students and residents but also of the general public, giving more than 150 talks a year to some 3,000 Atlantans, including those in the popular Emory MiniMedical School. Medical faculty also reach out to middle- and high-schoolers, teaching in summer science camps designed to interest these young people in medical or scientific careers.

Meeting past and future challenges
Having responded quickly and broadly last fall to the needs of patients, students, and residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina, medical faculty this year turned attention to developing one of the nation's most comprehensive plans for facing a possible flu pandemic or other disaster, working with colleagues across the university. Medical faculty also are leaders in the Southeastern Center for Emerging Biologic Threats, an Emory-founded partnership among 12 universities, five state health departments, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The Carter Center, and private partners, which was created to leverage expertise needed to deal with infectious disease threats, whether naturally occurring or the result of bioterrorism.

Plowing money back into the economy
With $543 million in annual operating expenses, the medical school has an estimated annual economic impact on metro Atlanta of $1.2 billion. Ongoing construction of a new $58 million, 162,000-square-foot education building, scheduled to open next spring, has been a major boon to local jobs. In addition, medical school faculty attracted $292 million in sponsored research to Georgia in 2005-2006, which translates not only into new discoveries but new jobs as well.


	Looking to the Future

	Emory's medical school is part of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center and is thus integral to the center's vision to create a new era of health and healing for the 21st century. This vision calls for bold new ways of teaching and learning and for integrating patient care and research to help accelerate progress in both. The medical school's new building and new curriculum make for a good start in implementing this vision. And so does a new center being built at the Emory Crawford Long Hospital campus in midtown Atlanta to house an innovative Center for Health Discovery and Well-Being. Opening early in 2007, this new center is part of the Emory/Georgia Tech Predictive Health Initiative. Its goal is to build a new model of health care that can predict disease and intervene before it develops. The center will take advantage of advances in genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics to help define what predictive health care looks like in actual practice. Investigators will follow several hundred healthy people, collecting physical, medical, and lifestyle histories and performing tests targeting known predictors of health and illness. Personalized health programs will be prescribed to address individual risks. Implementing this and other planned initiatives will require new academic, research, and clinical space. Construction planned for the coming decade calls for, among other things, a new research building and new clinic and hospital space, including major expansion of facilities on the campus at Emory Crawford Long.