Nationwide there are 283 physicians for every 100,000 people. In Arizona that number is only 207, and it’s even less in rural areas.

The University of Arizona College of Medicine boldly expanded its Phoenix curriculum to a full, four-year medical education program after the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) predicted the need for a 30 percent increase in physicians over the next 10 to 15 years. The Phoenix campus admitted its first class of 24 first-year medical students in 2007. Classes are expected to grow to 150 students per year over the next five years. The UA College of Medicine-Phoenix is located on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus downtown. The Translational Genomics Research Institute and the Arizona Biomedical Collaborative, along with additional space for the UA College of Pharmacy, Arizona State University and the Northern Arizona University School of Allied Health, are also located on the campus.

The UA College of Medicine Tucson campus graduates 110 new physicians per year. Thus far, more than 3,000 medical doctors have graduated from the college since its inception in 1967.

“Our biggest concern is that there won’t be enough residency programs for the increased number of graduates coming out of medical school over the next four years,” Grossman says. “Although we’ve been working on this a long time, there are many different issues involved in developing residency programs, such as where does the money come from. It costs several hundred thousand dollars to train a resident today because they need resources, clinical experience, instructors, etc. The funding we get from the government is not enough to cover all the expenses and that’s a big problem.”

Grossman says protecting the $3 million set aside last year by Arizona lawmakers to support graduate medical education programs at teaching hospitals is another critical concern.

“We’re working hard not to lose that funding,” he says. “But with the state budget facing revenue shortfalls of about $1 billion this fiscal year and close to $2 billion next year, it’s going to be challenging.”

Eugene Schneller, professor at the School of Health Management and Policy at Arizona State University’s WP Carey School of Business, contends that Phoenix needs a major academic health center or university hospital with a full range of specialties so medical students are cutting edge in their field when they graduate.

“Phoenix is one of the largest cities in the country, and while we have a number of residency programs at a number of hospitals, they do not come together and provide an educational platform like Duke University Hospital and John Hopkins,” Schneller says. “We also need to bring in a large number of students and graduates to replace the ones that leave the state or retire, and we need to attract them through a robust care system that provides good residency training.”

Midwestern University (MWU) in Glendale is addressing the state’s growing need by increasing its Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine class size from 150 to 250 students starting this fall. Dr. Lori Kemper, dean of Midwestern University, Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine, says the university has been planning for the increase for two years.

“We expanded our on-campus facilities and added seven additional buildings,” Kemper says. “We also hired extra faculty and increased the teaching clinical faculty through expanded clinical affiliations.”

MWU also opened a new clinic in May 2007 that specializes in family medicine, osteopathic manipulative medicine, optometry, podiatric medicine and surgery. The clinic’s fully-licensed physicians are faculty members at MWU who train health care teams using the latest medical knowledge and technologies.

A total of 946 osteopathic physicians (D.O.s) have graduated from MWU since 1996 when it opened. About 213 now practice in Arizona.

A.T. Still University’s (ATSU) new osteopathic medical school opened in July in Mesa. The School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona (SOMA) educates and mentors high-quality, community-minded physicians who want to serve medically underserved populations such as migrant farm workers, the working poor and the uninsured.

“SOMA serves a critical need, especially since medical officials are predicting a shortage of about 200,000 physicians by the year 2020,” says Gary Cloud, assistant provost of ATSU.

ATSU schools include the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, Mo., Arizona School of Health Sciences, Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health and the online School of Health Management. Students in the SOMA program attend the Arizona campus for year one.

Kemper says that while each of the universities has very different curriculums and often competes for the same rotation sites, she believes everyone should work together on common issues to improve on teaching students.

“So now is the time to figure out how we can be more efficient and effective together,” she says. “What all of us want is to produce colleagues we can be proud of. We want them to learn to be excellent medical care givers.”

wpcarey.asu.edu/shmp
www.atsu.edu/soma
www.medicine.arizona.edu
www.midwestern.edu/azcom