Baylor to open Temple medical school

Baylor College of Medicine plans to launch a regional campus in Temple, the first extension of the elite Houston school’s doctortraining brand in the state.

The campus, targeted for a 2023 opening, is being made possible through an affiliation with Baylor Scott & White, which operates a 636-bed teaching hospital in the central Texas city. The health system will provide most of the funding for the campus, another bid to expand Texas’ physician pipeline.

“This is our first foray into a regional campus, something we’ve always wanted to do,” said Dr. Paul Klotman, president of Baylor College of Medicine. “We’ve watched as many new schools have popped up in Texas. It makes sense for us to lead the effort to address the projected shortage of physicians, to ensure they’re of the highest quality. We’re confident we can do that.”

Klotman said he’d love to have a number Baylor regional campuses around Texas. But he said Baylor needs to get the Temple campus going first and make sure it’s successful, before thinking about additional sites.

The Baylor campus will replace Texas A&M’s Temple operations under an agreement involving the two schools and Bay

lor Scott & White. Temple was one of six clinical rotation sites for Texas A&M’s medical school, whose students receive first- and second-year classroom instruction in College Station before spending their third and fourth years in hospitals.

Under the agreement, Texas A&M is leaving Temple to enhance its presence at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, another of its clinical rotation sites. It currently has 118 students in Dallas, 88 in Temple, 149 in Houston and 216 in Bryan/College Station. It has small presences in Round Rock and Corpus Christi.

In TexasA&M’s place in Temple, Baylor will transform operations into a full four-year school with the same curriculum as students get inHouston. Baylor will take over the building currently occupied by Texas A&M.

Baylor’s plans call for an inaugural class of 40 medical students to begin instruction in fall 2023 and increase by 40 students every year, the total number not to grow beyond 160. By comparison, Baylor has 186 students in each class in Houston.

Klotman said the Temple campus should be relatively inexpensive, at least compared to medical schools that start from scratch, whose cost he estimated at $500 million to $1 billion. He estimated the Temple campus will cost no more than $200 million over a 10year period.

Besides Baylor Scott & White, non-tuition funding could come from philanthropy and the state, said Klotman.

Because Baylor is private, the project requires no approval by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board or the Texas Legislature.

It will require accreditation by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, but because Baylor is only adding a campus, officials said that mostly involves paperwork, not site visits or other arduous tasks.

Klotman said Baylor will soon name an associate dean to lead the campus.

That person has already been selected internally.

Baylor Scott & White is comprised of 52 hospitals, more than 800 patient care sites and more than 49,000 employees, including 7,300 doctors.

Baylor College of Medicine already trains doctors in Africa through its pediatric AIDS and cancer programs, though that involves residents.

The Temple campus will be the college’s first foray into undergraduate medical education outside of Houston.

The new campus will follow this year’s opening of medical schools at the University of Houston and Sam Houston State University in Conroe.

Those two, Baylor and a number of other recent medical schools in Texas all aim to help solve the state’s doctor shortage woes.