Hi, everyone. This is Lucas Voss with Becker's
Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to
the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. It's great to
have you. We have an exciting topic today,
one of my favorites on education
and our great healthcare professionals.
Atollan is furthering the careers of aspiring health
care professionals, helping to solve critical workforce shortages
across the health care industry.
And to talk about that, very excited to
have Scott Lyles with me, president at Tollen
Medical, a veterinary at Tollen Global Education.
Scott, thanks so much for being here today
and taking the time. Hey, Lucas. Delighted to.
Thanks for the opportunity.
Absolutely. And I wanna turn the floor over
to you. You are going to have to
introduce yourself to our audience, and I also
wanna hear a little bit more about your
work in health care and just a little
bit about Atalem's,
medical education footprint.
Absolutely.
Well, again, thank you for the opportunity to
join. As you, you teed up, my name
is Scott Lyles. I'm the president
of Aetalum's Medical and Veterinary Schools.
Aetalum
is the number one provider of health care
professionals in The US marketplace
that expands to nurses,
of all stripes,
doctors and veterinarians.
We're the second largest provider
of doctors,
in The United States and the largest provider
of doctors of color and the largest provider
of veterinarians.
We do this through,
education,
tertiary education. In the case of,
the nursing schools, we have two different platforms,
Chamberlain and Walden, nursing, which provide undergraduate
and graduate programs, including nurse practitioner and, physician's
assistants. The medical schools which I run, we
provide terminal MD degrees,
for primarily US Doctors. We have a few
we choose to, practice in Canada and The
UK and elsewhere. We're, quite an international
footprint. And in the case of the veterinary
schools, our terminal degree
is, 99%
DVMs. We do have a PhD program,
as well.
Our two medical schools are in The Caribbean,
the American University of the Caribbean Medical School,
which is in Saint Martin,
and Ross University School of Medicine,
which is in Barbados.
Awesome. Thank you so much for that introduction.
A wide variety,
a broad scope here.
One of the things I I wanna touch
on is is match day, and it's obviously
a lot of folks are familiar with with
that term.
It's it's very special for medical professionals,
obviously, and it's just behind us for for
most folks.
What are some of the trends
you've seen related to specific medical specialties and
and residencies? What are what are some of
the trends you're seeing there? Yeah. Well, thanks,
Lucas. And let me, just add to that.
That match day is a truly glorious day
Yeah. For medical students. It's for for most
of them, it's the Super Bowl even eclipsing
their graduation day,
which is, you know, for the families
equally,
equally glorious.
But match day,
for folks who may not be aware is
it it's the day that kicks off a
few weeks
of graduating medical students getting their residency placements.
This is when they become doctors. Mhmm. And
the trend in match day
has been
that on match day, about ninety three or
ninety four
% of students on that single day
will get to know where they're gonna be,
placed in residency.
A, a couple of the key trends that
have gone on recently
are that we have seen a decline
in the number of general practitioners. So folks
who are going into family practice,
folks who are going into general medicine,
internal medicine,
which are, typically, those are considered,
the general practice areas. We've seen a decline
in those. It's, actually below 50%
now,
across The United States.
And we've tended to see this has come
as specialties have really increased, and we've continued
to see that this year. Some of the
hottest specialties,
that are out there are orthopedic surgery,
obstetrics,
continue to be really, really, highly sought after
specialties.
Yeah. Absolutely. And I'm I'm glad again that
you've touched on the the the sort of
how special this process is simply because it's
it's career defining and it's life defining for
a lot of folks.
Would they end up in places that they
might stay for for a long period of
time?
Watching
some of these students, watching some of these
folks become doctors and entering their their their
next phase of their lives, essentially,
what are some of the characteristics
that define especially this last crop of medical
residents that that you've been seeing? What are
some of those characteristics?
Well, I'll I'll speak specifically
for our medical schools. Lucas, this is an
area
of which we are very, very proud at
Etalem and really fits into our
overall mission
of providing access to to medical health care.
We at Ross and AUC
continue to see a very, very high rates
of
first time
college,
professionals who are coming out. So these are
these are members of their families. It's the
first time,
that anyone in their family has been to
tertiary education, much less,
a professional program like, medical school.
We have a very high level of peoples
of color,
women
who are coming out of our schools, and
this has been a continued trend.
We also, as I noted,
see very high levels
of placement in
general health care, general practice. Yeah. For our
students,
this year, and this has echoed previous years,
we've seen around 60% placement of our students
in some form of general practice, whether that's
family practice, internal medicine, general medicine.
We see folks going, into that field, which
is great for The US health care system.
The US health care system has shortages of
doctors,
full stop.
In general practice,
those shortages
are really acute,
and we're very proud that we are providing
so much support for that area.
The second area that, has been a trend
is I I noted, you know, Lucas, a
little bit of that movement
away from general practice,
at large towards more specialty. We've also seen
a real concentration
within,
larger cities and larger more affluent geographies,
where where folks are going. And this this
notion of health deserts
or of medical care deserts,
that gets touted
is something that we've seen accelerating over the
last few years and gets amplified
with residency.
You know, when people go
to,
you know, very high end areas in the
in the suburbs
or very well healed hospitals,
that tend to serve,
a clientele
who really don't have a shortage of health
care options.
That happens at the expense
of areas that don't have that same luxury.
And what we see is with our students,
they are attending at a higher rate,
certainly a much higher rate than average,
of matching
in these areas that are otherwise known as
health care deserts where we're able to provide
a really significant level of support for those
communities.
Yeah. And that's such an important piece of
the puzzle, I think, especially for, as you've
mentioned, right,
health care deserts, rural America specifically,
having that general practitioner that's home in that
community is so key because a lot of
the communities we know this have lost their
doctors, have lost their providers. And, again, it
goes along with the shortages that we're experiencing,
all across the board there.
Now you you've touched on this a little
bit. What role does
international education play in this
and really alleviating
some of these pressure points,
both in supporting student access and preparing graduates,
right, to serve then in the communities that
we touched on, in the communities that really
need it most?
You know, it's a it's a great question,
and there's really two pieces to it. If
we think at the beginning of the pipeline
of medical education, this is people applying to
and getting into medical school, we have had
a chronic
shortage of supply
within MD programs
in The United States for multiple years.
Fewer than half of applicants
have been accepted into a US, MD program.
It's been about around 45%.
Fluctuates a little bit year over year, but
has generally stayed somewhere between 45
and just below 50%.
That translates into a shortage of doctors,
four years hence when it's match day for
those,
folks who were at one stage first year
students.
While the DO programs have really expanded,
they're not coming anywhere near to closing the
gap.
We reckon there's somewhere around a 30 to
31,000
student
gap between folks who want to,
be doctors and those folks who get a
seat in US schools.
DO programs close about 8,000 of those.
So they're so well above 20,000
student gap
in terms of getting the folks into medical
school who will ultimately become doctors.
That translates into tens and tens of thousands
of doctors shortage
as we go through
that life cycle
of medical education and ultimately into being
a doctor. And that is only becoming more
acute as we have more and more people
retiring.
So international medical,
programs
help to close that gap, in particular ones
like Ross
Medical and like AUC
who are geared towards training doctors who will
ultimately practice
in The United States. The vast majority of
our doctors, over 95% of our students, rather,
who practice wind becoming doctors in in The
US. So the IMG, the international medical, programs,
and the international medical graduates played a critical
role in helping,
to close
that gap. Any given year, we think there's
around 16,000,
folks who decide to,
study internationally,
and
those are folks who ultimately
may have the chance to come back and
be doctors in The US. There are some
programs that don't prepare them for that. Ours
do. And so we are, we're really helping
the entirety
of the system.
Yeah. And I one of the things that,
you know, we went from from our conversation
earlier on match day and and sort of
the exciting piece to this and and how
exciting it is for folks on on match
day itself to now you you've touched on
it. A lot of these folks, this is
the calling for them. They wanted to be
doctors their whole lives.
And there there are significant hurdles, and this
is a pathway for them to be able
to achieve their dream and their calling, which
is very important, I think.
That's absolutely right. Let me just add just
one point on that because you couldn't be
you couldn't be more spot on,
is
these folks have had the calling to be
doctors all of their lives.
And the only reason that they're not having
the same opportunity that they may have thought
about when they were in high school or
when they were in their undergraduate
is the shortage of seats in US medical
school. So they you know, to our point,
international programs, which have high placement rates like
we do, have the opportunity to help them
realize their dream.
Yeah. Absolutely.
When I was doing
or preparing for this podcast rather,
my favorite question that I wanted to ask
you was one of the last ones here
for us today.
What would you say to a prospective medical
student who has concerns? They may not be
a match for a career in health care.
I just wanted to hear your thoughts and
your perspective on this. What what will you
say to them?
You know, what I what I would say
is that
because of the situation that we have in
in US medical education,
a lot of students are told that they
just don't have what it takes to be
a doctor. Okay. And that is because of
an artificial shortage that we've we've created.
We have successfully,
over decades,
helped people become doctors who were told throughout
their entire undergraduate career that they wouldn't make
it.
We have very, very successfully done that. This
year, for '25,
our match day rate was just a little
bit over ninety three percent.
That puts us bang on average with USMD
Mhmm. And a little bit ahead of USDO.
And I will say for our in our
school's
recognition, that's about 20 points
higher than the average,
other international
institutions.
So we
have a strong,
track record and a strong history
of helping these folks who have dreamed of
becoming doctors
to realize that dream in The United States.
I think that's an important fact to hear,
an important statistics to hear for them or
for those that have that dream and want
to achieve that dream. Scott, thank you so
much for your insights and your time today.
This was fantastic.
Thank you, Lucas. I very much appreciate it.
It was great having you, and we also
want to thank our podcast sponsor at Talon
Global Education.
And you can tune into more podcasts from
Becker's Health Club by visiting our podcast page
at beckershospitalreview.com.