Press releases

Released December 17, 1997
Yale-New Haven Hospital news release

Yale-New Haven Hosts Italian Doctors
During Seminars

For more information, call 203-688-2488 or E-mail Ken Best

Seeing a large group of people moving through the hallways of Yale-New Haven Hospital is not an usual sight, but recently it seems the hospital's atrium lobby is the meeting place for a departing tour bus.

In a way it is, as twice each month groups of 30 or more Italian physicians have been traveling to New Haven since the spring to participate in a series of unique four-day medical education seminars. They meet with physicians from the Yale University School of Medicine and the hospital, as well as with Yale-New Haven administrators to learn about scientific breakthroughs, hospital management practices, health care financing in the United States, managed care issues and more.

The Italian physicians also have the opportunity to spend time training on the use of Internet resources in the medical school library.

"It's been a great interactive experience between the visiting physicians and those of us from the hospital and medical school," said Dr. Giacomo Basadonna, associate professor of organ transplant surgery at YNHH and the Yale School of Medicine who is coordinating the visits. "The visiting physicians are not university professors but they are attending physicians who have been hired by hospitals in Italy. We're providing the teaching we're supposed to and we're learning, too."

Dr. Basadonna said the educational trips to Yale-New Haven are sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. Other academic medical centers from around the United States have called to check progress on the program, he added.

Among the hospital administrative areas making presentations to the physicians are finance, clinical administration, nursing, laboratory medicine, planning and pharmacy services, among others.

The physicians visiting Yale-New Haven include cardiologists, cancer specialists, gynecologists, transplant surgeons and internists, Dr. Basadonna said.

"This program should open the way to have more foreign patients to come to Yale-New Haven for areas of specialties where we excel," Dr. Basadonna said. YNHH's international reputation for care and treatment has resulted in patients from more than 80 nations, according to hospital records.

Dr. Basadonna said the physician visitation program could "potentially be the beginning of a more global and international way to treat patients worldwide through the newer means of communication such as the Internet and telemedicine." He added that the hospital plans to open an E-mail address for the foreign doctors to submit difficult clinical scenarios to YNHH specialists and receive an answer back within hours.

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