Idaho’s first medical school to open in 2018

BOISE – Idaho, which ranks 49th in the nation in number of doctors per capita, will get its first medical school, Gov. Butch Otter announced Thursday.

The Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine, a private medical school that will locate on the Meridian campus of Idaho State University, plans to break ground in 2017 and accept its first class of 150 medical students in 2018.

Otter called it “an exciting day for the entire state of Idaho.”

Dr. Robert Hasty, founding dean and chief academic officer for the new medical school, said, “It’s a done deal.”

Osteopathic doctors are fully trained and licensed, according to the Mayo Clinic, although their training includes more of an emphasis on manual therapies such as spinal manipulation and massage therapy than conventional medical school does.

A doctor of osteopathic medicine is called a D.O. rather than an M.D. After medical school, both D.O.s and M.D.s complete residency training.

Private investors will contribute more than $100 million to the medical school project, Hasty said; 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 that adds up to $3.85 million over the next 10 years.

Hasty said the entire incentive will be reinvested 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 Idaho when Idaho heard about it and made the pitch to locate the school in Meridian.

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.

Otter said preference will be given to Idaho students enrolling in the new school.

“It’s a once-in-a-generation chance for Idaho to address both our desire for better career opportunities for Idaho students and our need for more physicians,” the governor said at a news conference in his office.