ANTIGUA – The American University of Antigua (AUA), a major U.S. modeled medical and nursing school in the Caribbean listed by the World Health Organization, has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court against the Arkansas State Medical Board (ASMB) and its individual members for unfairly discriminating against graduates of medical schools located in the Caribbean who seek license to practice medicine in Arkansas, especially Americans who attend and graduate from those schools.
The AUA Complaint, filed jointly with two current AUA students and two AUA graduates, alleges that the ASMB — in collusion with the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) and its two sponsoring bodies, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) — is unlawfully, willfully and intentionally denying AUA students the right to apply for and to obtain licenses to practice medicine in Arkansas without due process of law and without equal protection of law, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Rather than institute its own standardized process to evaluate and approve individual applicants and medical schools, the ASMB improperly claims to defer to the California State Medical Board’s list of approved and disapproved schools. However, even though AUA is not on California’s list of disapproved schools, ASMB added AUA to its disapproved list. It did so without conducting a site visit, examining the school’s curriculum or considering information compiled by the medical board of any state. By comparison, the State of New York granted AUA’s application for approval of its clinical studies program based upon a thorough and detailed investigation of AUA, its curriculum, its faculty, its facilities and the quality of the medical education it offers.
“There is a critical shortage of doctors in Arkansas and only one medical school, yet motivated and accomplished US citizens and Arkansas residents with medical degrees are being prohibiting from practicing medicine in their home state as a result of the AAMC, AMA and Arkansas State Medical Board’s short sightedness and indolent approval practices,” said Neal Simon, AUA Founder and President.
A recent report from the United States Department of Health and Human Services identified more than 225 areas in which there is a shortage of medical health care professionals in the State of Arkansas.
The AUA Complaint asks the Court to restrain the ASMB from including AUA on its list of disapproved medical school without proper investigation under, or adherence to, Regulation No. 3 of the Arkansas State Medical Board.
