US-Malaysia medical school collaboration collapses

A dispute with Johns Hopkins University in the United States, ostensibly over “frequent late payments”, has led to a termination of the American institution’s partnership with Perdana University Graduate School of Medicine in Malaysia, both sides have confirmed.

Although the two sides are still disputing how much money is owed, Perdana in Malaysia has said it is intending to announce a collaboration with “another leading top tier” US university in due course, after an agreement was apparently signed on 11 August.

According to a separate statement from Johns Hopkins Medicine International, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine provided “advisory and consulting services” to Academic Medical Centre, or AMC – which owns Perdana – “to help develop Malaysia’s first private teaching hospital and private medical school offering a US-style curriculum”.

Lindsay Roylance Rothstein, Johns Hopkins’ director of marketing and communications, said in the statement by email to University World News that these services were delivered from November 2010 to July 2014, providing guidance and advice to the Perdana University Graduate School of Medicine, or PUGSOM, and “assisting in teaching and in the initiation of the school.

“However, we reached the difficult decision to end the existing relationship and agreement with AMC and we sent official notice of that decision to AMC on March 17, 2014.”

“We took this action because payments required under the agreement for the services provided by Johns Hopkins and its faculty were frequently received late and at the time the agreement was terminated, Johns Hopkins had not been paid for more than 12 months of work.”

But there appears to be disagreement over the arrears.

Perdana, in its own statement released last Monday 18 August, said AMC had paid US$34.199 million to Johns Hopkins on behalf of Perdana.

It said US$5m was paid towards the Swami Institute for International Medical Education established at Johns Hopkins University, and a further US$29.199 million “as part of the affiliation and collaboration agreement”.

The last payment made to Johns Hopkins was US$2 million on 7 May 2014, Perdana said in its statement, adding: “AMC and Johns Hopkins are in dispute over whether any further sums are payable and the failure of Johns Hopkins to address the many grievances of AMC and Perdana University.”

Rothstein said in the statement that the situation with PUGSOM had become “untenable” but added that despite its disappointment over the outcome of the partnership, Johns Hopkins would not close its doors on other international collaborations.

As of July 31, Johns Hopkins and its faculty and curriculum were no longer associated with PUGSOM. “While we are deeply disappointed by this outcome, we hold firm to our belief that international collaborations such as this are critical to advancing our mission.”

Perdana, a private institution, was the first in Malaysia to offer a US-style four-year graduate entry programme, paying substantial sums for the right to use the Johns Hopkins curriculum.

With its first intake starting in 2011, Lim Guan Eng, secretary general of the opposition Democratic Action Party, or DAP, called the collapse of the US-Malaysian partnership “the end of a four-year medical romance.

“Following the abject failure, the federal government must explain to the public how much it cost for this failed venture,” Lim said last Monday.

A separate Johns Hopkins medical venture in Singapore failed in 2006. Singapore had provided state subsidies of over US$50 million for the graduate medical programme.

At the time it accused Johns Hopkins of not fulfilling its side of the bargain in ensuring senior staff with ‘international reputations’ were in residence in Singapore, according to the agreement at the time.

Full details of the collapse in the relationship have never been revealed by either side. Johns Hopkins continues to operate a private hospital in Singapore, without a teaching element.

Bolting on a US-style medical graduate school in a country where most students took British-style undergraduate medical degrees lasting four to five years after secondary school, was always going to be problematic, academics had warned before the institution was set up. CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine International Steven J Thompson and Charles Wiener, CEO of PUGSOM, acknowledged that the US system “required a large shift in thinking” for Malaysian students used to the British system of medical education

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