Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
UAMS chancellor: Region needs own medical school
FAYETTEVILLE — Northwest Arkansas “ultimately” needs its own medical school, said Cam Patterson, chancellor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
Such a school would fit with an ongoing effort to grow the footprint of UAMS in the region, said Patterson, who took over as top administrator June 1. UAMS has regional campuses throughout the state, but its main campus and teaching hospital are in Little Rock.
Patterson visited Fayetteville on Friday to meet employees at the UAMS Northwest campus, where only a
small percentage of UAMS students attend. UAMS enrolls about 2,800 students in various health programs, according to its website. About 300 of those students are in Fayetteville, said Leslie Taylor, UAMS vice chancellor for communications and marketing.
Patterson said no timeline exists for creating a new medical school.
“Ultimately, I think that Northwest Arkansas is going to need its own medical school. And UAMS and I, personally, are very supportive of that. We want to be part of that. And we want to work with the community to see what it will take to make that happen,” Patterson said.
Such a school would still be part of UAMS, but “it in all likelihood would have its own admissions process, it certainly would have its own dean. And it certainly would be directly engaged with the community, which I think is the most important part,” Patterson said.
He said Arkansas is “dramatically underserved in terms of health care professionals,” and described Northwest Arkansas as growing enough to support a medical school.
As for the main UAMS campus, a new medical school would “only benefit and strengthen the campus in Little Rock,” Patterson said.
“It’s more likely, five to 10 years down the line, that we speak less about UAMS in Little Rock with regional campuses, and more about a statewide presence for UAMS,” Patterson said.
Patterson talked about the growth that’s already happening at the UAMS Northwest campus, which opened in 2007. The Fayetteville campus had 201 students three years ago, according 2015 data from UAMS.
“In terms of the Northwest campus, it’s not as big as the Little Rock campus, but it is growing substantially faster,”
Patterson said.
He said he traveled to Fayetteville to meet staff members, with no specific announcements made. UAMS, the state’s largest public employer, has cut about 600 jobs out of a workforce of about 10,900 statewide since January after running into an unexpectedly large budget deficit.
UAMS operates as a medical school while providing care for patients at a hospital and various other sites.
The University of Arkansas board of trustees last month approved a UAMS budget that projects $1.57 billion in expenses without running a deficit. Stephanie Gardner, at the time UAMS’ interim chancellor, told trustees last month that she was optimistic about an improved financial outlook compared with the previous fiscal year.
Mark Waldrip, chairman of the 10-person board, said it would be up to Patterson
to propose any plan for a new medical school, which would then be reviewed.
“A very important component of that would be an analysis of all the financial implications,” Waldrip said.
Patterson said no formal analysis has been put together, with funding the biggest hurdle for such a project.
“It takes a lot of money to run a medical school,” Patterson said.
In the meantime, Patterson said he’d “like to dramatically expand the number of thirdand fourth-year medical students that we teach here” at the UAMS Northwest campus. The Fayetteville campus now is only open to students in their third and fourth years of study, with 36 medical students at the Northwest campus, Taylor said.
Patterson also said he expects UAMS to begin new clinical programs in Northwest Arkansas.
“A lot of people who live
in this community go outside of the community for health care, especially for advanced services. And I don’t think that that’s good for the community, and I don’t think that that’s good for patients,” Patterson said.
Asked about any new specific services to be offered by UAMS in Northwest Arkansas, Patterson said no decisions have been made.
Patterson said he also wants to strengthen ties to the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Both universities are part of the University of Arkansas System. UAMS and UA-Fayetteville have partnered on a new occupational health program.
Told of Patterson’s support for a medical school in Northwest Arkansas, Steve Goss, president of Mercy Clinic Northwest Arkansas, said “it would be good for the area over the long haul to have a medical school here.”
Mercy Clinic Northwest
Arkansas partnered with UAMS in 2015 to begin a new internal-medicine residency program, which involves additional training in clinical settings after medical school.
Goss said providing residency training if there is a new medical school would “take a fair amount of planning.” He noted that UAMS has “the whole university hospital facility and clinic there in Little Rock.” In the Northwest Arkansas region, there would be a question about how to coordinate such training, but “I think it’s a challenge that the area can rise to meet.”
Larry Shackelford, president and chief executive officer of Fayetteville-based Washington Regional, a medical center, said in a statement that UAMS plays a key role in increasing the number of health care professionals and said the organization is “optimistic” that Northwest Arkansas would follow the
track for other growing metropolitan areas that have an academic medical school.
Mike Morgenthaler, market president of the Springdale area for First Security Bank, also serves as a volunteer board member for Northwest Health.
“We’re constantly recruiting. I think all hospitals are constantly recruiting,” Morgenthaler said, adding that having a medical school “would be wonderful.”
Dan Ferritor, a former UA-Fayetteville chancellor and now chairman of the UAMS Northwest advisory board, said the possibility of a medical school has not been a topic of discussion for the board. Such a school would provide more health care professionals for the region, he said.
“You see a very strong relationship between where people study and where they end up setting up a practice,” Ferritor said.