GW medical school a potential win-win for Baltimore

I was interested to read that LifeBridge Health has agreed to house a regional medical campus at Sinai Hospital where George Washington University medical students can complete their third and fourth year clinical rotations (“LifeBridge Health will establish Baltimore regional campus for George Washington University medical students,” Nov. 10).

This is not a novel concept. In 2008, my alma mater, Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, in collaboration with the Maine Medical Center in Portland, developed a MaineTrack program for 40 students each year, many from Maine, who are interested in practicing primary care in rural and less affluent communities. As with the GW and LifeBridge partnership, students spend their first two years at Tufts medical school and their clinical years in Maine. The program has been highly successful with many of the graduates staying to practice in Maine.

We now face a situation in which many qualified Baltimore area students have trouble gaining medical school admission, and Baltimore and rural areas of Maryland are experiencing a well-documented severe shortage of primary care physicians. New schools of osteopathic medicine are planned to open on the campuses of Meritus Health in Hagerstown and Morgan State University and they will help. However, it would also make sense for the LifeBridge and George Washington collaboration to reserve a number of slots for Maryland residents committed to primary care practice in the state, especially in medically underserved areas.