BOISE — Idaho’s top elected officials and medical leaders unveiled a partnership Thursday in order to launch the state’s first ever private medical school, but the leading physician’s group in the state expressed concern about the plan.
The Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine will be a privately funded for-profit medical school with the capacity to have up to 150 a year starting in 2018, with the hope of creating more doctors for rural Idaho. The college will be affiliated with Idaho State University at its Meridian campus.
“This is a golden opportunity for Idaho,” said Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter.
Nearly $110 million to $125 million for the school is being put up by private investors, said Robert Hasty, founding dean of ICOM.
Otter was flanked by representatives from the Departments of Education and Commerce, local officials and the Idaho Hospital Association. The Idaho Osteopathic Physicians Association — a group that includes about 120 of Idaho’s nearly 700 osteopaths as members, was also represented. But the state’s largest physician organization, the Idaho Medical Association, was notably absent.
That’s because they were one of the few groups not brought in on the discussion, said the group’s leader, Susie Pouliot. The IMA has about 2,500 members — that’s about 80 percent of the physicians in Idaho.
IMA members had heard rumors of talks, and the association indicated they would like to discuss the possibility and hear the information first hand, Pouliot said. But they weren’t told about the efforts until the governor’s office called a few hours before Thursday’s announcement, she said.
“We have criteria that we have adopted to evaluate these sorts of proposals, but we didn’t think it was appropriate to evaluate a proposal based on hearsay,” she said. “I’m disappointed that we weren’t able to be part of the conversation.”
The IMA’s list of criteria that must be met in order for the organization to support a medical school includes several items such as accreditation eligibility, affordability and the supported expansion of accredited medical residency programs.
Typically medical students participate in clinical clerkships or rotations during their third and fourth years of school, and then seek residencies once they graduate. With projected classes of 150 students a year, there could be up to 300 new undergrad students seeking clinical spots followed by residencies.
It’s not yet clear how the new school would find those spots. There are currently only about 120 residencies available in Idaho, and developing new clerkships and residencies will be part of the school’s efforts, said Hasty.
The new school will create a strain on the clinical rotation system, which is already limited, Pouliot said. Doctors are more likely to stay and practice in the areas where they do their residences, she said, so sending new grads out of state doesn’t help Idaho’s doctor shortage.
“Idaho may be poised to become a chief exporter of medical education graduates, because there will not be comparative adequate access to do their residences in the state,” she said.
The man behind The Burrell Group, Daniel Burrell, is a real estate investor who owns an industrial garnet mine in New Mexico. Medical schools are a new venture for Burrell, however. His first, the for-profit Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine in Las Cruces, New Mexico, is expected to accept its first class of students later this year.
Like the college proposed for Idaho, the New Mexico college is next to a public university. Students attending Burrell have access to all the university facilities and services at New Mexico State University and can pay a bit extra to use NMSU’s housing and meal services.
That’s the same deal spelled out in the plan approved by the Idaho Board of Education on Thursday.
It means that Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine will get to offer students many of the same services they would get out of a larger, more established school, but The Burrell Group won’t have to pay for the additional buildings or the associated property taxes, instead relying on the public facilities next door.
The new school won’t get any state funds for operation, but investors are getting a substantial state tax break. The Department of Commerce agreed to reimburse 21 percent of the college’s state taxes for up to 10 years under a plan intended to promote job growth in Idaho. That’s because the school is expected to create 90 jobs that pay on average $88,300 a year.
The incentive value is estimated at $3.9 million.
A shortage of clinical spots has tanked other efforts to bring medical schools to rural areas. In Montana, the private medical school company Manipal LLC announced in December that it was dropping its plans to bring a medical school to that state because there wasn’t enough clinical capacity in Montana and the nearby states to train students.
The Burrell Group was also looking into opening a for-profit medical school near Montana State University in Bozeman, but ended those talks in December 2015. At the time, MSU President Waded Cruzado’s office noted that the talks have raised concerns among doctors across the state. Neither MSU officials nor those with the Burrell Group said whether they expected those talks to resume in the future. Hasty was also named as the founding dean of the proposed for-profit college in Montana, however, so if the Burrell Group did continue to pursue a college there it would have to hire a new dean or have Hasty handle both operations.