Dramatic Performer to be Part of Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration in Augusta

Jim Lucas, a dramatic performer known for his uncanny resemblance to Martin Luther King Jr., will be the featured speaker at the annual Tri-College Celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The ceremony, hosted in alternate years by the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta State University and Paine College, will be at noon Friday, Jan. 16 in the Natalie and Lansing B. Lee Jr. Auditorium at the Medical College of Georgia.

Mr. Lucas is an advocate of Dr. King’s philosophy of non-violent action to effect social change and has received national acclaim for dramatic recitations of his speeches. President Bill Clinton called him “the most authentic and exhilarating King I have ever seen.”

Mr. Lucas has been a guest speaker for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City and the National Baptist Convention. He has performed at more than 100 colleges and universities and throughout Germany, Japan and South Korea. His resume also includes television and film appearances in Ladder 49, Something the Lord Made, The West Wing, 24, The Wire and The District. He is currently co-starring in The Meeting, a play about the lives of Dr. King and Malcom X.

The annual Tri-College Celebration will also feature performances by choirs from all three institutions.

by Jennifer Hilliard
MCG

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State Issues Certificate of Need for Ambulatory Care Center

The Georgia Department of Community Health has issued a Certificate of Need to the Medical College of Georgia Physicians Practice Group to build an ambulatory care center in Columbia County.

The Certificate of Need is a state-required license for health care services and equipment used to regulate the purchase of expensive medical equipment and control the distribution of health care resources across the state.

The planned $34 million, 65,000-square-foot facility, called MCG Medical Associates Ambulatory Care Center, would be located on Washington Road in Evans, near William Few Parkway. The proposed facility would house three operating rooms, two procedure rooms, an imaging center with a CT scanner and a clinic with 45 exam rooms. MCG specialists will provide a wide range of services from primary care to outpatient procedures and therapies, diagnostic lab tests and imaging and outpatient endoscopic and surgical procedures.

While both the state and the Physicians Practice Group acknowledged that there was not a population-based need for new ambulatory surgery operating rooms, the certificate was approved because the facility will provide an additional site for clinical service, physician training and patient-oriented research.

"This facility will exist to support the clinical, educational and research missions of the institution,” says Dr. Curt Steinhart, president and chief executive officer of Physicians Practice Group. “It will be a community-based practice, where faculty provide patient services in a setting where residents and students can learn. Exposure to both hospital and ambulatory care settings is opportune because so much of health care is moving to an ambulatory setting. We need to train our students and residents in environments like those they’ll practice in, otherwise it will be foreign to them.”

“This will be an invaluable resource as MCG looks to expand in this area,” adds Dr. D. Douglas Miller, dean of the School of Medicine and chief clinical officer at MCG. “Its completion will enable us to hire more faculty and give existing faculty more places to practice. It will also give our students and residents more opportunities for training and provide the people who receive care there access to important clinical research. As the state’s largest provider of medical education, it is important that we remain on the front line in addressing the physician shortage. This facility will be an important part of that.”

In supporting the institution’s clinical mission, the new facility will feature the newest and best technology available, Dr. Steinhart says.

“Physicians want to practice in facilities with the best equipment and facilities that create the efficiencies that make their practice as productive as possible,” he says. “And that is the type of environment patients want to come to. This ambulatory care environment will provide the type of environment that will attract the patients that will serve as the foundation for enhanced clinical service, educational opportunities for our trainees and venues for clinical research.”

The Certificate of Need process is subject to appeal over the next month, so a groundbreaking date has not been set. “However, we will continue to move forward with our planning,” Dr. Steinhart says.

By Jennifer Hilliard
Medical College of Georgia

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Dean will give State of the School Address

Dr. D. Douglas Miller’s, dean of the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine, State of the School Address has been rescheduled for noon Friday, Aug. 15 in the Natalie and Lansing B. Lee Jr. Large Auditorium in the Auditoria Center. The address had been scheduled for July 23.

The address will be given during the school’s monthly Faculty Senate meeting.

MCG School of Allied Health Sciences Video Receives Telly Award

A video celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Medical College of Georgia School of Allied Health Sciences has earned MCG videographer Tim Johnson a Bronze Telly Award.

Mr. Johnson directed, edited, co-produced and served as videographer of Remembering 40 Years of Excellence, which debuted during MCG Homecoming in April. Dean Shelley C. Mishoe was executive producer, Dr. W. Kent Guion, associate dean for student, faculty and community affairs, producer and Grace Miller, the school's director of advancement, co-producer.

The video features historical footage and photographs and interviews with the school's founding dean, the late Raymond Bard, via archival footage, Dean Emeritus Biagio Vericella and Dean Mishoe. MCG President Daniel W. Rahn and Provost Barry D. Goldstein also are featured.

The Telly Awards honor video and film productions and local, regional and cable commercials and programs and are considered premier awards for the industry. This year's 29th annual competition received 13,500 entries from all 50 states and across the world. Entries don't compete against each other, but against a high standard of excellence, with only 18 to 25 percent of entrants receiving a Bronze Telly Award for outstanding achievement.

Mr. Johnson earned a bachelor's degree in communications from Augusta College (now Augusta State University). He has worked for production houses in California, Augusta and Aiken, S.C., and spent 10 years in cable television as a video producer and freelancer before coming to MCG's Department of Visual and Instructional Design in 2004.

He has garnered five national awards at MCG, including two Telly Awards for other School of Allied Health Sciences videos: a 2005 Silver Telly, the highest honor, for To Teach, Discover and Care, and a 2007 Bronze Telly for If Given the Opportunity. He received the Health and Science Communications Association’s Silver Award and the Admissions Advertising Award for his video, A Closer Look: MCG Admissions. In Augusta's Southern Fried Flicks Film Festival, he received the 2005 award for Best Short Feature and the 2006 award for Best Local Feature.