Regional impact

Distributed campuses: An entire region dedicated to educating the healthcare teams of the future

Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine is unique among academic health centers, which all have well-developed research capabilities and carefully crafted educational programs. At Geisinger Commonwealth, however, patient care is a robust third pillar. Our distributed campus model and our tremendous community clinical faculty — who are physicians first — thrust patient care to the forefront of everything our students learn. That commitment to patient care is the great strength of a Geisinger Commonwealth medical education.

Community well-being

As a system, Geisinger has devoted significant resources to examining the unique health needs of the communities it serves and proposing novel solutions that can be applied locally, but transferred globally. From Springboard Healthy Scranton to the health system’s innovative Fresh Food Farmacy®, Geisinger believes that if it can solve common health problems like obesity and Type 2 diabetes in our part of Pennsylvania, those solutions can be carried across the nation and around the world. Nowhere is this belief put into action more vigorously than at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine.

The School of Medicine plays a central role in the well-being of its home communities. Our impact is felt economically (Geisinger has an annual $9.9 billion positive impact on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s economy), but more importantly, it’s felt in the ways our presence enriches and uplifts our neighbors. Geisinger Commonwealth is most visibly concerned with bettering lives and improving the healthcare workforce through medical education and advanced fellowships, but our academic focus begins as early as grade school. Our REACH-HEI (Regional Education Academy for Careers in Health – Higher Education Initiative) program is an out-of-school experience that provides academic enrichment opportunities and enables students in northeast Pennsylvania to succeed in health-related professions. A longitudinal program helping middle school, high school and undergraduate students, REACH-HEI has a proven track record of success, with hundreds of its program participants successfully completing their high school and college goals. In 2017, the first cohort of high school students graduated from universities — and some have joined their Geisinger Commonwealth REACH-HEI family as students in the school’s doctor of medicine (MD) and master of biomedical sciences (MBS) programs.

The School of Medicine also cares about behavioral health in the region. Market intelligence firm Open Minds, working on behalf of Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine’s Behavioral Health Initiative (BHI), concluded that a 7-county region in northeast Pennsylvania would need to increase its number of psychiatrists by 40 percent simply to meet current need. As a result of those data, in 2015 BHI generated a key recommendation: The School of Medicine and The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education should co-create a psychiatry residency program to train new doctors in this desperately needed specialty. Just two years later, The Wright Center welcomed four residents to its brand-new, ACGME-accredited (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education) psychiatry residency program. Every year since, a Geisinger Commonwealth graduate has matched into the program. In addition, in 2018 the School of Medicine welcomed nationally renowned psychiatrist Leighton Huey, MD, as associate dean for Behavioral Health Integration and Community Care Transformation. Since Dr. Huey’s arrival, BHI has launched integration of care efforts in partnership with local agencies and has laid the groundwork for a project focused on building resiliency in the community.

“Geisinger Commonwealth is a unique medical school because no other medical school has made mental and behavioral health, in collaboration with community, its No. 1 priority. My goals for the curriculum are to provide students with the tools, awareness and expertise to integrate physician and mental health in a way that’s seamless — so it’s just a matter of fact that the two problems will be addressed together.”

– Leighton Y. Huey, MD, Associate Dean for Behavioral Health Integration and

Community Care Transformation

Fast fact:

Approximately 1,129 physicians and healthcare professionals in northeast and central Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey serve as Geisinger Commonwealth clinical faculty members.

Matthew Busch

MD Class of 2021

When Matthew Busch, MD Class of 2021, entered medical school, he was fairly certain he wanted to be a pediatrician. Volunteer experiences, a meaningful thirdyear rotation and a research project tailored to helping kids grow up to enjoy a lifetime of wellness convinced him his choice was correct.

“In my first and second years at Geisinger Commonwealth School of

Medicine, I volunteered to tutor and mentor with REACH-HEI*,” he said. “I was also active in the school’s American Sign Language club, where I learned to sign alongside parents of children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. These experiences confirmed my passion for working with and advocating for children.”

In his third year, Matthew specifically sought a rotation at Geisinger

Janet Weis Children’s Hospital in Danville. He knew the region’s only children’s hospital would provide him a “more robust” experience that would greatly add to his clinical knowledge. “The benefit of a rotation at a children’s hospital is that you get to work with residents and see what a pediatrics residency is like, its culture.

And the residents were amazing. They were so willing to use time they didn’t have to teach me,” Matthew said. “For example, one resident took 30 minutes to teach me about medicines for diabetic ketoacidosis before we went to see the patient in the ED.”

Matthew’s rich volunteer and clinical experiences were augmented by his participation in clinical research into adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and their impact on poor adult health outcomes. Matthew sought out F. Dennis Dawgert, MD, a retired pediatrician and Geisinger Commonwealth faculty member who teaches clinical skills and Patient-Centered Medicine. “I am very interested in ACEs and Dr. Dawgert has been active in research in this area. I asked him how I could get involved.” Dr. Dawgert urged Matthew to reach out to Geisinger Commonwealth’s Behavioral Health Initiative, which is looking at the relationship between ACEs and adult opioid addiction.

Matthew ended up working with Terri Lacey, director of the

Behavioral Health Initiative, and The Wright Center to add ACE screening to the initial intake of hundreds of patients to the center’s addiction medicine clinic. Matthew was responsible for analyzing the data to look for relationships between ACEs and substance use. Seeing for himself how the overwhelming majority of patients struggling with addiction say they witnessed their own parents using was powerful. “Understanding how ACEs impact a child’s long-term health and how they are predictors of negative outcomes will make me a better advocate for better resources for my patients,” he said. “It will be a good way to practice preventive medicine.”

* Regional Education Academy for Careers in Health – Higher Education Initiative (REACH-HEI)

Geisinger Janet Weis Children’s Hospital

Geisinger Janet Weis Children’s Hospital is the first rural acutecare children’s hospital in the country and one of the first rural academic facilities in the region. As a dedicated 91-bed inpatient unit, Geisinger Janet Weis Children’s Hospital has separate floors for infants, toddlers and teenagers where children receive the most advanced pediatric services. At the children’s hospital, specialtytrained pediatric doctors and nurses provide expertise in more than 30 medical and surgical disciplines, including care of children with neonatal illness, life-threatening critical illness, traumatic injuries, neurologic disorders, cancer, diabetes, gastrointestinal disease, infectious diseases and heart and lung disorders. In addition, the genetic team partners with Geisinger’s Genomics Institute to provide cutting-edge diagnosis and treatment of genetic disorders and birth defects.

“Being a teaching hospital, Geisinger Janet Weis Children’s Hospital has a wonderful culture of learning. Medical students get to see a wide variety of pediatric patients — the hospital has specialists in every field. And working with residents provides yet another facet to medical student learning. It is a very comprehensive experience.”

– Thomas Martin, MD, Professor Emeritus and Founder of Geisinger Department of Pediatrics at Geisinger Janet Weis

Children’s Hospital