Mission: To decrease healthcare disparities and reduce physician’s shortage, in the medically underserved communities in California. The PhA organization helps foreign-trained doctors living in America, to get licensed and practice as Physician Associates in primary care, providing quality healthcare for communities in shortage areas in California and statewide CA.
Vision: Healthy communities served by highly skilled, fully certified foreign-trained doctors, as physician associate primary care professionals.
A solution for US person foreign-train MDs to close the disparity gap for quality healthcare access for the American/Californian community confronting the serious problem of shortage of physicians especially primary care physicians. Healthcare is a human right; as a result, practicing medicine is also a right of healthcare professionals.
What is PhA-eAML proposal? Please watch these three videos: the second is the most important. First video: the first part to explain about the current medical licensing system in the US with all the troubles.
Second video: the second part to explain how the PhA-eAML Physician Associates and the eco-saver Attainable Medical Licensing can solve the current problems of the current medical licensing system
The following video is to explain about the number of foreign-trained MDs are not accepted into medical residency and unable to finalize their medical doctor licenses.
The PhA Project- Physician Associates Project – About the Founder
Healthcare is a human right; as a result, practicing medicine is also a right for healthcare professionals.
Our nation is struggling with the broken healthcare system especially on the aspect of disparity of accessibility, a tough challenge of shortage of medical doctors to serve the community. According to the AAMC (American Association of Medical College) Study in early 2018, America would face a shortage of 200,000 physicians projected from now to 2025; with the increase in population, it only worsens.
To be able to practice medicine independently, a physician must have a powerful piece of paper, a medical doctor license. However, the current medical licensing system in the US has become intricate, redundant, and wasteful; it effectively prevents many qualified MD professionals to be able to properly licensed. So, it turns out to be a counter-productive system to supply for the high demand of public healthcare services.
Among the physicians and medical graduates who are prevented from finalizing their MD licenses, foreign-trained US physicians are the worst victimized professionals. There are many external and internal caused that expose their vulnerability to the current ineffective licensing system. In my book, Survival Skills for USMLEs and Medical Licensing in the US, I have articulated all the issues, small and big ones.
As a foreign-trained MD from Saigon, Vietnam, Katherine Miller, now a Vietnamese American of Northern California for 17 years, The Founder of the PhA Organization, has delineated a solution to close this disparity gap for quality healthcare access by a new pathway that tries to fit foreign-trained MDs who live in the American soil as a very enriched ready resource of medical professionals, and who already obtained the ECFMG certificates to return to practice medicine, primary care so to serve the community with high demand of primary care/family physicians.
The PhA Project is the short form for the PhA-eAML Project acronym for the Physician Associates in Services and the Eco-saver Attainable Medical Licensing Project. This is a huge and lengthy project that can have the strong impact to revolutionize the current cumbersome and reality-detached medical licensing system into a more realistic, practical, and energy-saving, eco-friendly licensing system that can effectively and sincerely serves the needs of quality healthcare for the diverse communities. The PhA Project mission is to supply quality mid-level medical providers with the title PhA Physician Associates, via a licensing process with a pertinent residency program for PhAs from six to nine (6 to 9) months and possible extensions, to serve the communities especially underserved areas of California and eventually nationwide. The practice scopes of these PhAs are higher than NP Nurse Practitioners and PA Physician Assistants, but lower than practicing MDs. So, they would work under supervision of licensed MDs with the ratio of ten to fifteen PhAs are reported to one licensed MD. Their scopes of practice are considered flexible based mainly on the safety of the community they provide the services.
Their clinical experiences and medical professional knowledges are constantly revamped by strenuous CME activities under many different means and methodologies, including basic and advanced technologies that would be designed to fit with the clinical practice circumstances.
In general, after three to four years of PhA Practicing, PhAs with all their activities are recorded meticulously by the electronic medical record and licensing record system would eventually finalize their MD licenses and they can merge into the current MDs mainstream.
Katherine Miller, MD
Founder/President/CEO