Spokane medical school given ‘candidate status,’ on track for 2017

Washington State University cleared the latest hurdle in the effort to launch a medical school in Spokane.

The accrediting body for medical schools admitted the facility to “candidate status” after reviewing an extensive application, Chancellor Lisa Brown said Thursday. That keeps the proposed Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine on track to accept its first class of about 60 first-year students in fall 2017.

“This is the timeline we were planning,” Brown said.

The application involved hundreds of pages of information on a dozen standards medical schools must meet, covering such areas as facilities, curriculum, faculty and student services. It will be followed by a site visit in the spring or early summer.

The Liaison Committee on Medical Education has accepted the information on WSU’s application, Brown said. “The site visit is to check what’s actually there,” she added, and will include inspections of the facility and interviews with faculty and staff.

If WSU-Spokane passes the site visit, it would likely come up for preliminary accreditation from the committee later this year, with clearance to bring in students the next fall. The school would have to meet another round of reviews when those students are in their second year before receiving provisional accreditation, and a final round for full accreditation before that first class graduates in spring 2021.