ROOTSTOWN, Ohio — On Thursday, Oct. 1, Northeast Ohio Medical University launched a new virtual leadership speaker series called Vitals: Visionary Health Leadership in Action.

Dr. John Langell is the president of Northeast Ohio Medical University.

He called the American healthcare system somewhat broken and said there is a dire need for more medical professionals.

“Healthcare has gotten out of control. It's not affordable. It’s frequently not accessible,” said Dr. Langell.

Dr. Langell argued the current shortage of doctors stems from two main issues, and they aren’t that there is a lack of interested students enrolling.

“We get at least 10 applicants for every spot that we have available in our medical school. I would have no problem filling even three times the number of positions we have available, if the infrastructure supported it,” said Dr. Langell.

Instead, Dr. Langell said a limited number of healthcare providers accepting students for clinical training is to blame for the shortage. The other, perhaps larger, issue relates to residency after medical school.

“That's where you get your real in-depth clinical training, those spots are funded by CMS, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, but they only fund a certain number of spots and in fact, we do not even have enough current spots to train the graduates in the U.S,” said Dr. Langell.

COVID-19 turned medical education upside down.

It shut down labs and in-person learning, while halting clinical experience for a time in order to reduce the risk of infection.

The pandemic also impacted graduation for soon-to-be MDs.

“We need to get them into the clinics, you can't learn to take care of a patient without actually taking care of a patient...If we don't educate these medical students, we've already got a big doctor shortage. We're not going to be able to graduate any and if we can't graduate any we're going to make the COVID crisis even worse,” said Dr. Langell.

Dr. Langell hopes NEOMED'S monthly Vitals: Visionary Health Leadership in Action speaker series will put heads together to reimagine a better version of the future of healthcare and become an educational tool on how to be part of the solution.

“Each of the speakers is given 17 minutes, and we chose 17 minutes because that's reported to be the average time that a primary care doctor is allotted to see a patient. So, if we can't share something powerful, a really powerful message in 17 minutes, that needs to also be part of this evaluation process to say, well then how can we adequately take care of a patient in 17 minutes, and we've been forced to do that because of the shortage, and the financial demands on health systems," said Dr. Langell.

NEOMED's virtual leadership speaker series is free and open to the public. To learn more about the events click here.