Private Hospitals
Providence Medical Center
Providence Medical Center is a 448-bed hospital located in northeast Portland. Providence sponsors its own internal medicine residency program. The OHSU resident supervises a Providence intern on one of the inpatient services. The resident assigned to Providence (interns do not rotate to private hospitals) participates in the educational conferences provided to the Providence housestaff. The rotation provides residents exposure to the private practice model.
Health Maintenance Organizations
Kaiser Permanente
In the second and third years, residents spend eight weeks in the Kaiser health care system, a closed panel staff model HMO enrolling nearly 400,000 patients in the Portland metropolitan area. The population served by Kaiser has demographics that are quite different from those seen at other hospitals in the training program. This rotation has provided residents with unique practice opportunities in general medicine and invaluable experience in the development of non-internal medicine ambulatory based skills.
During the eight-week rotation here, residents function as general internists. The residents attend internal medicine subspecialty clinics and optional clinics (examples include dermatology, ENT, urology and medical orthopedics) each morning and afternoon. On an average of every eighth to ninth night, residents function as consultants to the emergency room, evaluating those patients who may require hospitalization. Full-time staff internists from Kaiser (many of whom are graduates of the OHSU residency program) share call with the resident and are available at all times to provide assistance. The overall focus is on primary care medicine, but when on call, also involves a full spectrum of acute care, including initial management of patients bound for the cardiac care unit or medical intensive care unit.
During the Kaiser rotation, there are two important conference series. On Wednesdays, Kaiser staff provides a series of morning-long conferences that focus on common problems encountered in the clinics and Emergency Department. On Thursday mornings, residents participate in the morning-long Health Systems Curriculum, an innovative approach to help residents learn about the organization and delivery of health care.
