Florida to get new med school; enrollment starts in 2001

Florida State University College of Medicine next year will begin building a new four-year, community-based medical school.

By Jay Greene, amednews staff. Oct. 16, 2000.

Although most experts agree the nation trains too many physicians, Florida State University is planning to build a new allopathic medical school, the first in nearly 20 years.

Unanimously approved by the state Legislature in May, the FSU College of Medicine in Tallahassee is expected to break ground on a $50 million, 220,000-square-foot building in May 2001. Completion is slated for 2004.

The most recent U.S. allopathic school to open -- Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Ga. -- graduated its first class in 1986. Since then, four osteopathic schools have opened. There are now 19 osteopathic and 125 allopathic medical schools nationwide. All are filled to capacity and reject one of three applicants.

The FSU medical school will become the nation's 18th community-based medical school. FSU's legislatively mandated mission is to train medical students who will specialize in primary care, geriatric training and service to rural and underserved areas, said Myra Hurt, PhD, FSU's acting medical school dean.

Changing the culture

"We have a great opportunity to change the culture and the way students are educated in Florida," Dr. Hurt said. "We will be able to focus on the education of our students as our top priority because we won't have the traditional stresses of running a teaching hospital."

FSU's first class will start next May with 30 students admitted per year. Officials hope to slowly increase that number to 120 students per year in 2008. Students will complete the first two years of basic science at the FSU campus in Tallahassee and the final two years of clinical training in five community branch campuses.

Since 1971, FSU has operated a first-year medical school program for 30 students under the Program in Medical Sciences, which is affiliated and accredited through the University of Florida's medical school. Some 65% of those FSU PIMS-trained doctors go on to primary care practice in Florida, Dr. Hurt said.

"With our new outreach programs I think we can do better than 65%. Maybe 75%, which is a much better rate than anywhere in the state," Dr. Hurt said. Currently, fewer than half of the 500 medical students who graduate from other medical schools in Florida stay in the state, primarily because there aren't enough residency slots at teaching hospitals. The state licenses more than 2,500 doctors each year to keep pace with demand.

"Focusing on [primary care, rural and underserved areas, and care for the aging] is a huge challenge, one that probably in academic medicine is most difficult to address," said David Stevens, MD, co-secretary of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education. The LCME accredits the nation's 125 medical schools.

One challenge facing FSU is remotely supervising faculty -- primarily community physicians -- who will also be busy treating their own patients, Dr. Stevens said. "The school will spend a lot of time helping community faculty be good teachers," he said.

To link community campuses, monitor teaching and ensure even educational experiences for students, Dr. Hurt said students and faculty members will each be issued hand-held computers to collect and download data to computers in Tallahassee.

"We will use information technology like nobody has ever done before," Dr. Hurt said. "The devices will contain databases that will tell us about what type of patients students are seeing; their age, race and symptoms; and what level of care they provided them. We will evaluate the data and that will help tell us how things are going."

Besides FSU in Tallahassee and University of Florida in Gainesville, the state's other medical schools are at the University of South Florida in Tampa, the University of Miami and Nova Southeastern University, an osteopathic school in Fort Lauderdale.

The new school is not without its critics.

The Florida Board of Regents opposed the plan. Officials of the Florida Medical Assn. and the state's other medical schools did not formally oppose it, but publicly declared the state did not need to spend millions of dollars to build another medical school while the state's three allopathic schools are struggling financially.