YOUNGSTOWN Tod Children's Hospital awaits training funds

Children's hospitals nationwide strive to sustain programs while facing significant cuts in state Medicaid programs.
YOUNGSTOWN -- Tod Children's Hospital will receive a share of $285 million to train children's physicians.
Congress appropriated the money for independent children's teaching hospitals Thursday. Exactly how much Tod's will receive in fiscal 2002 is to be determined.
The year before, Congress appropriated $235 million, awarded to 57 children's teaching hospitals. Of that, Tod Children's Hospital received $1.2 million.
"This federal support is critical to our mission of providing the highest quality training to the next generation of pediatricians," said Dr. Robert Felter, Tod Children's Hospital medical director.
Training figures: Nearly 30 percent of the nation's pediatricians and 50 percent of pediatric specialists are trained at independent children's teaching hospitals. In addition, Dr. Felter said, children's hospitals are often the only source of care in a regional area for many critical pediatric services.
"Independent teaching hospitals like Tod Children's Hospital will now receive a level of federal support for physician training that is much more comparable to what adult teaching hospitals receive under Medicare," he said.
Children's hospitals nationwide strive to sustain clinical care, education and research missions while facing significant financial challenges because of cuts in state Medicaid programs, he added.
A gap in the way the federal government invests in graduate medical education programs at adult hospitals vs. children's hospitals has long been a serious cause for concern among child advocates. As managed care moved into the health-care market, traditional sources of support for all teaching hospitals began to dry up, leaving Medicare the last significant source of federal funding, Dr. Felter explained.
Many of these children's teaching hospitals were forced to choose between their graduate medical education programs and community service programs such as child abuse prevention.