Improving access to health care means increasing the number of primary care physicians. For nearly 40 years, that’s been a big part of the NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine mission.
Primary Until the advent of managed care in the late 1980s, that type of patient care was considered the norm for anyone pursuing a career in medicine. Getting to know patients and their families and providing continuity of care over generations was commonplace. But in today’s medical environment, primary care physicians (including family practitioners, internists, and pediatricians) like Moukala-Cadet are becoming more rare. Despite the importance primary care physicians play in the general health of the communities they serve, the overall number of them is dropping. Low insurance and Medicaid reimbursement rates have made the solo practitioner model nearly impossible and have spurred many internists to leave private practice for hospital-based positions. At the same time rising student debt loads lead new
FALL 2015 NYIT MAGAZINE
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Illustrations: Dante Terzigni
A SKIN EXAM AND BIOPSY. An annual gynecological exam and pap smear. A patient suffering intermittent chest pain. A checkup to manage a patient’s diabetes. This is an average morning for Anne-Marie Moukala-Cadet (D.O. ’02), a family practitioner with the Veteran’s Administration Health System in Binghamton, N.Y. Binghamton is within a “physician shortage area” in New York state. The outpatient clinic where Moukala-Cadet is the lead physician in women’s health prevents the need for veterans and their families to travel 1.5 hours to the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Syracuse. “I wanted to be a physician to help patients get the best care possible, to educate them about their health and chronic conditions, and to help them prevent illness,” she says. “And that is what I do every day.”