WSU moving ahead with medical school
Washington State University is moving ahead with plans to launch its own medical school in Spokane, including sending some students to the Tri-Cities and other WSU campuses for clinical training.
WSU has launched a search for a founding dean of its medical school as the university prepares to welcome its first medical students in fall 2017, said President Elson S. Floyd.
“Medical education is alive and well in Spokane,” Floyd said at a news conference on the campus of WSU Spokane, where the new medical school would be located.
Washington State’s plan calls for medical students to spend their first two years in Spokane, then two more years at WSU campuses in the Tri-Cities, Vancouver, Everett or Spokane.
Details of would that mean for the campus in north Richland, which has about 1,500 undergraduate and graduate students, weren’t immediately available but a committee has been formed to determine what infrastructure will be needed for the program.
University officials also have reportedly been meeting with healthcare providers around the state to teach the new medical school’s clinical students.
WSU leaders have contended the state needs another public medical school to meet the increasing demand for physicians, particularly east of the Cascades.
The state Legislature this year changed a state law that had given the rival University of Washington sole authority to operate a public medical school in Washington.
WSU formerly was part of the multistate cooperative headed by the University of Washington School of Medicine that provided medical education to college students throughout the Pacific Northwest but that relationship ended when WSU officially began seeking its own program last fall.
Floyd said WSU’s medical school would seek to produce family practitioners and would seek to increase the number of graduates willing to work in rural areas. One way to do that is to recruit medical students from rural areas, he said.
WSU leaders have emphasized that the Richland campus would play an important role within the medical school system, but that doesn’t mean extensive changes or a building would be needed on campus.
Classrooms, study areas and other services for Tri-City-based medical students could be on the campus but the biggest demand will likely be for administrative space, officials have said. Students will likely would to spend most of their time off campus working with cooperating hospitals.
Officials with Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland said they haven’t had formal discussions with WSU about having third- and fourth-year students working with the hospital’s doctors.
However, the hospital and university already have a close relationship because pharmacy and physical therapy students do internships with hospital staff. It was Kadlec that provided the new home for WSU’s nursing school on Lee Boulevard in Richland.
“They don’t need to approach us because they know we do that and want to do that,” said Kadlec CEO Rand Wortman.
Officials with Trios Health in Kennewick were not immediately available but the hospital district also works with WSU’s nursing program and has a residency program of its own.
The school has an ambitious timeline that calls for gaining preliminary national accreditation next spring, provisional accreditation in 2018 and full accreditation in fall 2020.
At the same time, it will begin recruiting medical students in summer 2016, and graduate its first class of medical students by the spring 2021.
Current budget proposals by House Democrats and Senate Republicans each contain different amounts of funding for the new medical school. The House bill calls for spending $8 million on the school, with $2.5 million going toward the accreditation process and the rest toward getting education programs started. The Senate proposal allocates $2.5 million total.
Meanwhile, the University of Washington has proposed that its existing medical programs be expanded, and has commissioned a study showing that is the most cost-effective way to produce more doctors in Washington.
The two universities have agreed not to oppose each other’s proposals in the Legislature. Floyd also has signaled his interest in continuing a relationship with UW.