UW weighs expanding med school

Spokane business leaders are trying to start a new program in Spokane to teach first-year University of Washington medical students.

Backers of the idea say it’s a natural fit with Spokane’s well-established health care industry and a promising opportunity to turn teaching into medical research and perhaps novel ideas that inspire the birth of new companies.

The concept has been kicked around for years but only recently has the idea gained traction.

Last week a handful of local business executives traveled to Seattle and met with UW medical school officials. The meeting was engineered by the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce, which sees higher education and health care as two of the most important economic pillars in Spokane.

Dr. John Coombs, a medical school vice president who oversees programs outside the school’s Seattle core, said he would conduct a feasibility study in coming months about whether UW can expand in Spokane. Some third- and fourth-year students already live and work in Spokane, pursuing their medical degrees.

The medical school is trying to turn out more doctors to ease a shortage in the Northwest.

Coombs said the medical school accepts about 100 applicants out of a pool of 650 – most all of whom are qualified. It’s a troubling ratio when compared with other medical schools that accept about half of all qualified applicants, he said.

Spokane chamber executive Rich Hadley thinks Spokane can position itself as an answer, and hopes landing a first-year program will lead to bigger and better things.

He thinks the first-year program is a virtual given: “You bet. We can do this,” he said.

UW already has first-year medical students taking basic-science classes at universities in Laramie, Wyo., Bozeman, Anchorage, Moscow, Idaho, and Pullman. Spokane wants to join those ranks. About 20 students study in each of those towns.

But Hadley and others already are thinking about the more difficult step of adding a program for second-year students, which currently is only offered in Seattle. Those students continue taking classes and begin working with doctors.

Hadley said bringing some of those students to Spokane would be a triumph.

“It would basically give us a medical school,” he said.

Skip Davis, chief executive of Sacred Heart Medical Center, made the trip to Seattle and called the meeting a promising start.

“What was decided was we need to sharpen our pencils and look at financing,” he said. “That’s part of the next assignment.”

Spokane and UW do not plan to ask the Legislature for funding to conduct the feasibility study. Coombs said UW knows how to measure a community’s fitness for such a program.

A medical school program in Spokane would be a collaboration of UW and Washington State University. Another collaboration that may come out of the talks is a first-year dental program with UW and Eastern Washington University working together.

Partnering among state universities has been working in Spokane. Hadley points to the Riverpoint campus near downtown Spokane as evidence, and this year’s push to relocate the Intercollegiate College of Nursing from the Spokane Falls Community College campus to Riverpoint. The latter is a leading legislative priority for the Spokane chamber.

The soonest Spokane could have first-year medical students would be two to three years. The notion of expanding that to second-year students is several years away. Such a move would entail the recruitment of physician teachers and new classrooms for perhaps 40 or more students.

If Spokane lands a second-year program, then the community is poised to reap the economic benefits.

Each year about eight biomedical companies are spun out of UW’s medical school. If Spokane could perhaps get one or two of those, the benefits in jobs, prestige and research dollars would be tremendous, Davis added.

“I think that’s what is so exciting,” Davis said, “the idea of seeding intelligent ideas into profitable ventures.”