Medical school training in Grand Junction?

BY MARIJA B. VADER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
February 22, 2008

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    GRAND JUNCTION — If medical students are trained in western Colorado, chances are they’ll return to western Colorado to practice medicine once their training is complete.

    That’s the thought process behind luring the University of Colorado-Denver School of Medicine to expand its medical school to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction.

    “This is part of our way to address the doctor shortage,” said Jim Spencer, communications director for the CU-Denver School of Medicine. “That’s why we really want this thing to go forward.”

    According to figures provided by St. Mary’s and CU, the nation will need an additional 85,000 doctors by 2020. Roughly half those are needed in primary care practice, which includes family physicians, pediatricians, internists. The other half will be needed in other specialties, and among those are obstetricians.

    The Colorado Health Institute estimated the state will need 50 additional general medicine physicians and 20 additional obstetricians annually over the next decade to keep up with increasing demand and an aging population.

    The physician shortage is felt most acutely in rural areas and in western Colorado, including Grand Junction.

    To help keep up with the demand, CU School of Medicine increased the number of students it allowed every fall, from 132 to 156.

    St. Mary’s Hospital is already seeing the physician shortage, said Dan Prinster, vice president of business development.

    “We consistently see a challenge in recruiting physicians,” he said. “The population is growing, and the members of St. Mary’s medical staff are retiring.”

    And the number of people graduating from medical school is not keeping pace with the growth in population, he said. “So the competition for new medical school graduates is getting more and more intense all the time.”

    People who want to become physicians must first earn an undergraduate degree and be accepted into medical school. Then, they must complete two years in a classroom setting of medical school.

    That’s followed by another two years intense study in a clinical setting, also considered medical school. It is this second two-year phase of medical school that officials from St. Mary’s and CU want to bring to Grand Junction and western Colorado.

    After that, students complete their multi-year residency in their specialty of choice.
The Grand Junction clinical branch campus will likely start accepting students in 2009, Spencer said.

    In the first year of the clinical branch campus, 24 medical students would finish their third year of medical school. The following year, those 24 students would finish their last year of medical school and an additional 24 students would start their third year.

    Eventually, the Grand Junction campus would have 48 students.

    Having the CU branch in Grand Junction will help expose the community to qualified physicians, and it will expose the medical students to the benefits of living in western Colorado, Prinster said.

    The benefits work their way into the community, said Dr. David West, who is in charge of the residency program at St. Mary’s Hospital. Teaching hospitals tend to be higher quality and physicians also tend to benefit from teaching student doctors, West said.

    The program will take money.

    Last year, the state Legislature allocated $300,000 to fund a feasibility study of expanding a portion of CU’s medical school to the Western Slope. This was Stage I of the program.

    The next step is to implement the pilot program to bring students here, Spencer said.

    That stage should cost around $2 million.

    “We have not gotten the money yet,” Spencer said. “I think we’re pretty well committed through Stage II, the pilot program.”

    In Stage II, 12 students are sent to western Colorado “to test out the facilities,” Spencer said.

    Next week, Richard Krugman, M.D., dean of the CU School of Medicine and vice chancellor for health affairs at CU-Denver; Robert Feinstein, M.D., senior associate dean for education for the medical school; and David West, M.D., associate dean for Western Slope and planning and recruiter for St. Mary’s Hospital, will announce their plans for a clinical branch campus in Grand Junction.

    The forum will take place from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Hampton Inn, 205 Main St.

    To sustain the program, it will take between $3 million and $4 million annually from the state to fully expand the CU medical school to western Colorado, he said.

    Reach Marija B. Vader at mvader@gjfreepress.com.