Upstate Medical University’s medical school was placed on probation Thursday by an accrediting organization after concerns were raised about the school’s curriculum.

The Liaison Committee on Medical Education recommended Upstate be placed on probation last fall, but State University of New York academic medical center officials appealed the recommendation last week, according to an article published in The Post-Standard on Saturday.

The committee made its final decision to follow through with the sanction Thursday, according to the article.

Upstate joins five other schools placed on probation by the LCME and will have two years to fix all problems identified by the organization, according to the article. The committee accredits a total of 136 U.S. medical schools.

Losing accreditation may be detrimental to the school, as it would no longer be allowed to distribute medical degrees. David Duggan, interim dean of the medical school, told The Post-Standard the chances of this happening were extremely slim.

Duggan said the school remains fully accredited and is working to address the committee’s concerns, according to the article.

Duggan could not be immediately reached for comment.

The LCME acts as the nationally recognized accrediting authority for medical education programs leading to a degree in the medical field in the United States and Canada. The organization is sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Medical Association, according to the article.

Accreditation shows that a medical school is meeting national standards, and graduating from an LCME-accredited school is required for a medical license in most states, according to the article.

LCME’s largest criticism against Upstate was the lack of a central committee with the authority to make changes to the school’s curriculum, according the article.

The organization was also bothered by a cheating incident that occurred last year involving fourth-year medical students who assisted each other on online quizzes in a medical literature course, according to the article. Upstate suspended the course for at least one year to try and improve it.

Duggan told The Post-Standard that Upstate’s sanction was not ‘based on any shortcomings in the quality of its medical students or their accomplishments.’ Upstate has alerted all prospective applicants about the school’s probation, Duggan said, but so far it has had no effect on the applicant pool.

In recent years, the LCME became stricter and is taking more severe actions against medical schools it does not believe to be meeting standards, according to the article.

The medical school exists within Upstate Medical University Hospital. The hospital was placed on a ‘watch list’ for the hospital’s high frequency of safety concerns, complications and patient deaths in September.

The Niagara Health Quality Coalition, a hospital performance research group, included University Hospital along with 20 other New York state hospitals on the list as part of an annual report card. The report stated statistics of patient deaths, patient dissatisfaction and complications.

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Published on February 19, 2012 at 12:00 pm

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