M.D. school combo an idea for the ages
Texas Christian University and the University of North Texas Health Science Center announced Monday that they will jointly create a new M.D. school, enhancing medical education in Fort Worth just as Texas and the U.S. face shortages of physicians.
It’s a plan worth praising for many reasons, not the least of which is that combining existing facilities and resources would enable the new school to start on a relative shoestring and without taxpayer assistance.
Possibly even more surprising, once the possibilities sink in, is that nobody thought of this before now.
UNTHSC includes the 45-year-old Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine, which trains and graduates around 230 physicians a year. The center also has graduate schools for pharmacists, physician assistants, physical therapists, public health experts and biomedical scientists.
TCU is a world-class, liberal-arts-centered, 10,000-student private university founded in 1873 that is looking to enhance its academic profile and increase its number of graduate students.
The two are a solid match.
UNTHSC leaders have been pushing since 2009 to enhance its offerings with allopathic — most people call it M.D. — training.
Michael R. Williams, the health science center’s president, and TCU Chancellor Victor J. Boschini told the Star-Telegram Editorial Board on Monday that they began talking about collaboration in March when it became clear that yet another session of the Legislature would pass without authorizing a state-supported M.D. program in Fort Worth.
Texas taxpayers are paying for two new University of Texas medical schools, one in Austin and the other in the Rio Grande Valley.
The one in Austin includes a new 2,011-bed Seton Healthcare teaching hospital costing $295 million. The new school will get $35 million a year from Travis County taxpayers, and the UT System will provide $40 million for faculty recruitment plus at least $25 million a year in operating support.
The Austin program is expected to start next year with 50 students.
The cost in Fort Worth if all works as planned, Williams and Boschini say, will include $25 million in private donations already pledged to UNTHSC and another $50 million from TCU or its $1.2 billion endowment. No further state approval is required.
Classes will be in existing facilities on both campuses, with the first 60 students starting in 2018, the plans say.
With grand ideas, details sometimes change between initial plans and final implementation.
Not the least of the potential problems here is that the new doctors will need hospital rotation and residency programs to complete their training.
Local hospital programs will have to be expanded, which will cost money.
This is a significant milestone for Fort Worth. It’s a bright idea that deserves local encouragement and support.
This story was originally published July 6, 2015 at 5:49 PM with the headline "M.D. school combo an idea for the ages."