Robert Ross, a gung-ho entrepreneur who juggled global deals in things like fertilizer, steel and anti-snoring medicine, then made his big mark by starting profit-making medical, veterinary and nursing schools in the Caribbean, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 92.

The cause was cancer of the urethra, his son Warren said.

Ross was one of the first American businessmen to trade commodities in Communist Poland, Bulgaria and Romania. Time magazine in 1972 called Ross one of the new Marco Polos for his fervid worldwide trading.

But his biggest moment came in 1976, when a staff member’s son who had been studying medicine in the Dominican Republic was rejected by the American hospitals to which he applied for the next phase of his education, clinical training. Ross started a business helping students from foreign medical schools get accepted at hospitals in the U.S.

That led to his starting a medical school for would-be physicians who could not get into American medical schools. Graduates had to pass the same tests as graduates of American schools, and many accepted hard-to-fill positions in primary care, often in run-down urban neighborhoods. “They are a godsend,” a Brooklyn hospital administrator told Forbes in 1983.

It worked well for Ross, too. In 2000, he sold the medical school, along with a veterinary school he started on St. Kitts in 1980, for about $135 million.