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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Eye On Boise

More on proposed new medical school; dean says it’s a ‘done deal’

More on Idaho’s proposed new medical school, the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine:

  • The school will break ground in 2017 and plans to open to its first class of 150 students in 2018. Said Dr. Robert Hasty, founding dean and chief academic officer, “It’s a done deal.”
  • Private investors will invest more than $100 million in the project. The capital investment to build and equip the school is estimated at $32.6 million.
  • The medical school has been awarded a Tax Reimbursement Incentive by the state of Idaho, through the Idaho Department of Commerce, that adds up to $3.85 million over the next 10 years. Hasty said the entire incentive will be reinvested back into scholarships and providing residency programs for the school’s graduates, “mostly for scholarships.” The incentive, approved on Feb. 19, is for 21 percent of the payroll, income and sales taxes the project pays to the state over 10 years; it’s based on an estimated 90 new jobs at an average wage of 88,300.
  • A similar school, the Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine, was established at New Mexico State University in 2013. Some of the same investors were exploring a possible new private medical school in Montana to serve a five-state region including when Idaho heard about it and made the pitch to locate the school here. Megan Ronk, state commerce director, said her first conversation about the project was on Jan. 20. “We turned it around quite quickly,” she said. “It was just the good old fashioned making the pitch: Why not Idaho?”
  • The new medical school is a for-profit, taxpaying entity, but Hasty said it’s being formed under Idaho’s new “B-corp” or “benefit corporation” classification. Idaho lawmakers passed the “benefit corporation” legislation last year; it allows for-profit corporations to form with a mission of “creating general public benefit,” rather than just earning profits. So far, 68 Idaho corporations have filed as benefit corporations, from Treefort Music Festival to Oliver Russell, a Boise advertising and public relations firm.
  • Hasty said he expects 50 percent of the medical school’s graduates to stay and practice in Idaho. But he noted that after four years of medical school followed by three to seven years of residency, the first doctors won’t emerge from the new program until 2025. “This is not an overnight solution for the physician crisis right now in Idaho,” he said.


Betsy Z. Russell
Betsy Z. Russell joined The Spokesman-Review in 1991. She currently is a reporter in the Boise Bureau covering Idaho state government and politics, and other news from Idaho's state capital.

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