International Medical Graduate - Quality of Care

Quality of Care

An analysis among patients with congestive heart failure or acute heart attack in Pennsylvania, United States, found that patients of international medical graduates that entered medical school as non-U.S. citizens had the lowest death rates. There was not statistically significant difference in mortality between patients of all international medical graduates and U.S. medical graduates. There was a statistically significant lowering of mortality by U.S. medical graduates when compared to U.S.-citizen international medical graduates alone, but the odds ratio failed to show the difference was not due to factors outside of the study parameters. When U.S. citizen international medical graduates were compared to non-U.S. citizen international medical graduates, the difference was "striking" — consistent with previous research which found U.S. citizens who graduated from foreign medical schools, particularly from Caribbean medical schools, were associated with lower scores in other types of evaluations (e.g., specialty board scores) than other graduates.