Virginia Community Healthcare Association Membership Business Meeting

Registration begins at 8:30, meeting at 9:00am

Lunch 12:00-1:00pm

Training-1:00-4:00pm

IMMIGRATION: YOUR HIDDEN RECRUITMENT TOOL

Given the pervasive shortages in the physician workforce which will become even more stretched with the rollout of healthcare reforms, no physician recruiter or healthcare system can afford to overlook new ways to provide healthcare services.  Certainly, one largely untapped source of physicians is International Medical Graduates (IMGs), who currently comprise roughly 24% of the existing physician workforce. Slowly but surely, our immigration laws are facing up to these pervasive shortages in the physician workforce by creating more flexible measures that essentially channel IMGs into positions that traditionally have gone unfilled by U.S. physicians.

The Virginia Department of Health has been quite forthcoming in developing a very user-friendly J-1 waiver program that creates a partnership between the state and various medical systems seeking to recruit IMGs.

We have invited Bob Aronson, a nationally known expert in IMG immigration, to present a session on how to navigate our immigration laws for physician recruitment purposes.  His session will focus on the intersection of immigration law and healthcare needs – a new area that we will simply call “HEALTHIGRATION..”

Bob Aronson is one of the nation’s foremost immigration lawyers dealing with IMGs. He has written and spoken extensively on this subject to such bodies as the U.S. Congress, the AMA, 3RNet, and a broad range of other professional and governmental bodies.  He was previously appointed as the immigration legal advisor to the Secretary of Health and Human Services during its landmark study of immigration policy for foreign physicians.  He was also the Editor-in-Chief of The Physician Immigration Book, which is the most comprehensive and in-depth study of immigration issues related to IMGs.  He is also the founder and first chair of the International Medical Graduate Taskforce, which advocates for more favorable public policy measures for IMGs.

Bob holds his J.D. from the Indiana University School of Law and was then a Fulbright Fellow at the law schools of Harvard and Moscow State University.  In 2012, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the Indiana University School of Law for his contributions to the legal profession and his community involvement.

Bob’s presentations are invariably highly informative, wide-ranging, and engaging with a significant dose of humor and audience participation.  Most importantly, this session will give attendees a good insight into how immigration can be used as a powerful and highly effective recruitment tool.

This is not a session to be missed.