Spokane7
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May 27, 2011 in Opinion
Editorial: New medical school a real investment in area’s health
What’s this? Good news amid all of the budget-cutting coming out of Olympia? It hardly seems possible, but the state’s $2.8 billion capital projects budget includes $35 million to start building a medical school on the Riverpoint campus in downtown Spokane.
Make that fabulous news when considering that prospects for the Washington State University-Spokane Riverpoint Biomedical and Health Services Facility appeared gloomy when Gov. Chris Gregoire told a group of Eastern Washington leaders in January that the medical school was not included in her 2011-’13 capital funding budget. One of the holdups at the time, according to the Office of Financial Management, was that debt-wary state officials weren’t considering any projects costing more than $40 million. The medical school carries a price tag of $70.8 million.
But rather than take no for an answer, local government and business leaders began persuading lawmakers that the school was desperately needed. The ultimate solution was to give Riverpoint campus half of what it needs in the first year of the biennium to satisfy concerns over the state’s decreasing debt capacity.
The decision is a wise investment in the truest sense of the word. A recent report produced by the national health care consulting firm Tripp Umbach finds that training and research at Riverpoint will eventually support more than 9,000 jobs, generate more than $111 million in government revenue and carry an overall regional economic impact of $1.6 billion. Health care already accounts for one of every five jobs in Spokane County.
The potential for spinoff businesses and improved health care in the region is exciting.
Another key selling point is that the state is facing a shortfall in doctors. According to a 2010 report, Eastern Washington will need 1,000 new doctors by 2025. A new medical school won’t have the capacity to fill that void, but it can help chip away at the problem. In addition, training medical students locally increases the chances that they will stay here to practice medicine.
The “graying” of the health care work force is a national concern. In an October guest column for The Spokesman-Review, Dr. Paul G. Ramsey, dean of the University of Washington School of Medicine, noted that the state has two primary care physicians in their late 50s or older for every doctor under the age of 30. One of the keys to reining in health care costs is to expand the role of primary care physicians in coordinating care. But one of the drawbacks to that strategy is that the United States has a relatively lower number of such doctors.
So emerging from the budgetary dark clouds comes a new medical school, which should improve the region’s prognosis for years to come. This is news that should brighten everyone’s day.
To respond to this editorial online, go to www.spokesman.com and click on Opinion under the Topics menu.
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Dazzeetrader11 on May 27 at 2:23 a.m.
Sirti is what these editors promoted WITH this healthcare group at WSU Riverpoint. SO what’s happened after $200 million invested in construction alone???
And WSU has been paid for for 20 years this year. And where’s the research? One mjor article? SOmething? ANything outside of a big taxpayer bill? Nothing. Not one piece of research? Not one.
It’s a shell game. 100 new docs come to SPokane every year. SO why spend so much on a medical school? There has never been a plan put forth. Nothing to vote on. It’s your money…they just spent a lot of your money and didn’t even ask. And for what?
Jeffrey_Grey on May 27 at 8:00 a.m.
On the other hand…
http://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=21303
We spent $70.8 million on a ‘gamble’ that it will pay off against a potential future shortage of area physicians. So all the partisan posturing aside, the real question is; was that a good bet? People might have different opinions, but I think it was.
Especially when you recognize we ‘hedged’ the bet in that along with the medical school and the potential for more doctors, we also got something that creates, “…9,000 jobs, [generates] more than $111 million in government revenue and [carries] an overall regional economic impact of $1.6 billion.”
By me, that’s a very good bet.
Dazzeetrader11 on May 27 at 10:23 a.m.
What Knox wants isn’t what he should get. There is nothing wrong with 2 yrs in Spokane and these 2 additional years in Seattle of in one of the satellites. FURTHER, those kids stay in Spokane and do there clinical rotation in Spokane anyway. He’s generated an idea that doesn’t matter. They’re in SPokane no matter. IF they want to go elsewhere, that option is open to the students in their 3rd and 4th year. Key is that$100 million doesn’t have to be spent. The same outcome is achieved without the money being spent. THUS: it doesn’t matter….the kids trained in Pullman and Spokane do their clinical work in Spokane anyway.No reason to spend when the program won’t change one bit.
Knox is a practioner..NOT an educator. That Spokance CO Medical Society position rotates yearly. It’s not an academic post. It’s a lose political group NOT and educational group. Just another guy with an MD
Reality looms Jeff. In this time, to spend on this school is simply irresponsible.
I do notice throught your argument is the word “potential”. Chancey for hundreds of millions of dollars when the State is short on money….POTENTIAL…no real. Your thoughts on job creation are false. Boost in the economy over how long is?.Flase. It’s the theory…nothing in fact. A fantasy…a wish. The reality is that med school cost much much more than they generate. Look over federal budgets show that these school simply produce bodies…not revenue and this is why the fed budgets have to spend tons of money to get a kid trained.
Think what the health system on riverpoint has contributed in 20 years? Nothing. How about SIRTI and it’s $100 million? What has it produced? Point to one thing. ZERO.
It’s a hustle to spend money. State should be keep s our money for its debt. It’s not partisan……….it’s plain stupid to keep spending on spending that is a fantasy and unneeded.
selkirks on May 27 at 4:02 p.m.
@Dazzee:
Nothing? You think that the Riverpoint Campus has contributed NOTHING to the Spokane community? You, sir, are poorly misguided.
The Riverpoint Campus has brought thousands of students to Spokane. This alone is an economic impact. The money they spend here in Spokane goes back into local businesses, rather than into Seattle and the West Side.
The Riverpoint Campus is the reason that we still have a medical and biomedical services community in Spokane. Providence Sacred Heart is a leading-edge hospital. Providence would not be investing in Sacred Heart if they did not believe that Spokane and the state were investing in medical.
High-tech companies and medical companies do not want to be in a community that doesn’t have a culture that is welcoming to medical and high-tech. They want to be in cities that align with their vision. So they’re not going to go into Spokane if it doesn’t want to invest in its future.
Riverpoint has succeeded in bringing many high-tech and medical/biomedical enterprises into the Spokane community. (I’m not an economist, a city planner, invested businessperson, or someone with no life who can research these things—I don’t have time—so please don’t ask me to provide a statistic on that one. Instead, ask any local businessperson). It has succeeded thus far in promoting economic growth.
It has succeeded through tech. Spokane is home to one of the largest urban WiFi hotspots in the country—the HotZone. Riverpoint is home to a cluster of similarly-minded enterprises—the Terabyte Triangle—dedicated to engineering solutions to high-tech Internet and Computing problems. It is home to SIRTI, which has contributed much to Spokane’s ongoing renewal.
It has succeeded in and will continue to succeed in medical, with this new expansion of a four-year medical school on-campus. I’ve already related a few of the successes above. But much of the work is yet to come.
Dazzee, I occasionally question your seriousness. I often ask myself, when I read one of your posts, “what is this person thinking?” Anyone who thinks that the Riverpoint campus has not produced any appreciable benefits to Spokane is not only severely misguided, but ignorant. Your thoughts that Riverpoint would not be or is not an economic driver and jobs producer for the inland Northwest are completely clueless and baseless. Your crusade that this is “wasteful spending” is moronic. This is a HUGE win for Spokane. It is an investment in our future as a medical and tech center for the Northwest. We will succeed in this. Riverpoint will become a bustling college campus with four institutions represented: Gonzaga University, Washington State University, Eastern Washington University, and Community Colleges of Spokane. I know that if I were a student in fifteen years when this campus has grown into a real center of higher learning, I would go there. Few other centers will compare anywhere in the United States. We’re combining three great institutions who’ve already made names for themselves, pooling resources, and creating what will undoubtedly be something great.
In all honesty, though, if you don’t think that this is good for Spokane, please don’t speak up. It could be that you fear an influx of students who you fearwill vote blue. It could be that you have an aversion to white-collar jobs. Whatever it is, we really don’t want to hear you’re mindless drivel. We’re too busy celebrating.
monkeyman on May 27 at 5:13 p.m.
It is nice to have spanking new Riverpoint campus close to downtown. I am sure there is an economic impact from that, though may be hard to quantify. E.g. potential students at GU may be positively impacted (to choose GU), just a random example.
Calling everything “zero” again and again just “sounds” like a sound bite!
It increases the overall aesthetics of the area in any case…
Dazzeetrader11 on May 27 at 7:51 p.m.
Selkirk..nice fantasy. You post, although long, is wasted space. You offer plans and ideas (lofty ones)……nothing to point to though. Come back to reality.
It’s aGSI/Cowles hustle to have the taxpayers fund a campus. And for what? They’ve been working over there for 20 years alreaDY WITH NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT.
But……you haven’t pointed to one thing thats been done in 20 years and hundreds of million of spending on that WSU campus. I asked for one thing and you went on a solo ego jam session. Nothing though.
There IS no tech or biotech on that campus. None. Not one company and the labs are empty…so they’re not used as functioning labs. There won’t be either.
You should know your business better than to take poor Dazzee on in this area.
One article? Someto point to? One piece of research to point to! One!.You’ll be sitting for a long while since there is nothing. It will cost 3 times what the building costs to continue to operate that med school for just one yeaR.YES TRIPLE THE CONSTRUCTION COST….every year. Sounds like it’s smart to you?
Grab a clue, read something, and then come back for another drubbing.
It’s an OBAMA fantasy. “The clouds will part, the sun will shine and the soft wind will caress your face making everything new, shiny and bright…right?”
NOT. Study the issue and come back. Spending this kind of money for nothing should be a crime…..worse in this Obama economy.
misjustice on May 27 at 8:01 p.m.
Dazzedone, honey, use spell check PLEASE. It is difficult to take your passionate argument seriously when it is filled with spelling errors…
Selkirks gets the win in this debate…
Just sayin’.
; )
selkirks on May 27 at 8:02 p.m.
Dazzee:
Unlike you, I have a life in which I hardly have time to read the news. Instead, I’m talking to local businesspeople. And they all agree that Riverpoint has been immensely beneficial.
mtharves on May 27 at 8:06 p.m.
We need this medical school and many others in this country. We have a serious shortage of doctors, especially primary care ones. If you want to reduce medical costs, let’s have some competition. That means more doctors; that means more schools. The AMA has been in power too long; they set the number of medical school openings to control the competition. Time to end that.
selkirks on May 27 at 10:16 p.m.
@Dazzee:
OMGZZZ!!! It’s a GSI/Cowles/Verner collusion!! It must be stopped!!!
You’re ridiculous. If the country were full of people like you, NOTHING WOULD EVER GET DONE. Everything’s a conspiracy, according to you. Guess what? You can’t just blatantly lie and expect that people won’t notice.
Case in point: you said, of the Riverpoint Campus, that “the labs are empty…they are not being used as functioning labs.” That was a lie. How do I know? I’ve done work at Riverpoint, in one of their currently occupied and well-used Biological Sciences buildings. It currently houses the fragmented medical students referenced in this article. When I was there, I went into one of the labs. Specifically, it was a cadaver lab. So you could smell the formaldehyde, see the bodies, look at their various structures and organs. In addition, there were various separate organs (brains, lungs, hearts, and the like). I participated in this lab. Are you asking me to believe that this was all an illusion, that I was dreaming? That I couldn’t be telling the truth (I am)?
Because I’m pretty sure that this lab was real and well-used. In addition, it was clear that they were hurting for space. They had physical therapy items in classroom space, etc. They need to expand. That was pretty clear to me.
The big thing is that I’m pretty sure that you’re just going to go on ranting as if I had never said that bit up there ^. Meaning that according to you, there are no labs, there are no occupied buildings, there is no work being done.
Have you ever even been on campus? In one of the buildings? Labs? Have you ever driven by? Have you ever walked by along the Centennial Trail? YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT. So either shut up, admit fault and concede defeat on this issue, or, better yet, stop posting your ignorant drivel once and for all.
I’m sorry. I’m fired up about this. That someone can just lie with the purpose of achieving a political or social goal like this one. This is not the thing to be complaining about in the Spokane community.
Mayocynic1 on May 27 at 10:19 p.m.
Selkirk. U may know all kinds of business people . You don’t know healthcare . Stick to what you know. Your bushiness friends might all be cheerleaders for business. Taxpayers pay for this. As a local MD, I have to agree with the poster who says Spokane already has one. Clinical work isn’t done on Riverpoint anyway. All that will be down there is what’s being done now…ie basic science work. Why spend the extra money when we train students in the hospitals for their clinical work and the basic sciences are already being taught. It doesn’t make much sense. It might be good for the business people but doesn’t do much for medicine or patient needs. I agree with the idea that it looks like it’s a business hustle which sounds a but harsh. It is direct though.
Spokane has hundreds or more new MDs annually working here. Why spend more.
gmorton on May 28 at 10:37 a.m.
Editorial:
“The medical school carries a price tag of $70.8 million.”
No. The *building* carries a price tag of $70.8 million. That is far short of the cost of a medical school.
Spokane already has 3/4 of a medical school. At present, students can take their first-year courses in Spokane, since it is a WWAMI site. They must then go to Seattle for 2nd year courses. They return to Spokane for their clinical rotations (3rd and 4th year courses). They can also complete residency training in most fields in Spokane.
Presumably, the new building will provide classroom and lab space for the 2nd year courses – if the legislature elects to fund the faculty and other costs.
Whether there is an increase in the number of medical students graduating in Spokane depends entirely on the annual *operating budget* for the program, not whether or not there is a new building. And that is a question the legislature has yet to decide.