King College Seeks To Establish Medical School

BRISTOL, Tenn. – King College is looking for dancing partners in its attempt to establish a medical school and add a medical degree program.

Officials of the private, Presbyterian college announced the potential expansion plans Thursday, during a news conference attended by regional business and government leaders in the college’s student center.

“We want to engage in a strategic discussion with our communities and our region about establishing a medical school,” college President Greg Jordan said. “We believe a new medical school will not only provide much-needed health care for more than 10.5 million residents in a five-state area, but a far-reaching economic impact.”

Jordan cited reports predicting a critical national shortage of doctors within the next decade and outlining health-care needs of residents in this part of Appalachia. Nearly 40 counties in the immediate five-state region are classified as medically under-served, due to having too few primary care providers, high rates of infant mortality, poverty and a large elderly population.

King, which has more than 300 students enrolled in its nursing degree program, began looking at the possibility of establishing a medical school two years ago, Jordan said.

A six-month feasibility study by the Pittsburgh, Pa., -based medical consulting firm Tripp-Umbach showed such a project could succeed, Jordan said.

The five-state study area, which has more than 10 million residents within a 150-mile radius of the Tri-Cities, includes the cities of Knoxville, Tenn.; Winston-Salem, N.C.; Roanoke, Va.; Charleston, W.Va.; and Pikeville, Ky.

It would be primarily designed to attract students from this region to enter the medical field.

Establishing the new program will require “strong commitment and financial support” from regional health-care providers and governments, Jordan said. The college won’t fund the project.

“The resources for the medical school will be new resources,” Jordan said after the event. “It will operate as an independent unit within a larger curriculum model.”

The medical school buildings, which probably won’t be built on the college’s east Bristol campus, would cost between $60 million and $80 million, Jordan said.

“I’ve been privileged to talk to Mountain States [Health Alliance], Wellmont Health System and Holston Medical Group. We expect to have a primary partner and a secondary partner, but the door is open for everyone,” Jordan said.

Kingsport-based Wellmont, which operates the Bristol Regional Medical Center and seven other area hospitals, currently serves as a partner in King’s nursing program.

“Yes, we’ve been in discussion with King College,” Wellmont spokesman Brad Lifford said in a written statement released Thursday. “Just as we are a major health care provider in the region, King College is a major education provider. It’s a natural partnership to talk to area educators about possible additional medical education in the region. King’s School of Nursing graduates have distinguished themselves in the health care community and – if all of this works out – King’s graduates will be distinguishing themselves as MDs.”

Lifford declined to answer additional questions.

“Mountain States Health Alliance has a long history of working closely with East Tennessee State University’s Quillen College of Medicine, and we would anticipate continued increases in numbers of physicians being trained through that institution,” alliance President and CEO Dennis Vonderfecht said in a written statement released Thursday.

Mountain States, based in Johnson City, operates Johnson City Medical Center and more than a dozen other facilities in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia.

“We have also been working with other institutions in close proximity to our region, such as the schools of osteopathic medicine at Pikeville College in Kentucky and Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn., in efforts to increase the supply of new physicians to our region,” Vonderfecht said in the statement. “Any proposed new medical school in our region will need to demonstrate that it can increase the supply of physicians regionally without negatively impacting existing schools of medicine and without increasing the cost of producing physicians through unnecessary duplication.”

Holston Medical Group, a regional group of more than 150 physicians, plans to be deeply involved in the project, founder and President Jerry Miller said after the announcement.

“We intend to provide faculty, clinical settings and modernize health care through electronic medical records and tie this all together,” Miller said, adding the school would fill a great void in the region.

“We [group] are 32 doctors short today and recruiting a doctor to come here costs a minimum of $100,000,” Miller said, adding people from this region are more likely to want to practice medicine here.
About 80 percent of the doctors Miller recruits are of foreign decent, which can produce some cultural challenges, and about half are women.

“That’s wonderful, because our surveys show patients are more satisfied with ladies. But within five years of beginning, only about 20 percent are practicing full time, which contributes to the shortage,” Miller said.

Jordan said the proposed school would be designed to complement – not compete with – East Tennessee State University’s Quillen College of Medicine by focusing on training specialists in certain health disciplines.

Despite that assertion, ETSU President Paul Stanton expressed numerous concerns in a written statement.

“President Jordan informed me this past Tuesday about King College’s plans to create a medical school,” Stanton said in the statement. “We had a very cordial conversation and, while I had not anticipated King’s intentions to launch a medical school, it appears this has been in the planning stages for quite some time.”

Stanton said he is concerned about both start-up and continuing costs, which at ETSU are about $100,000 per student, per year and typically higher at private colleges.

The state-supported school welcomed its first class in 1978 and currently has 245 students enrolled.

“At this time, our concern is that another medical school might compromise ETSU’s clinical teaching sites both within hospital and outpatient settings. Our accrediting body has specific mandates that address clinical teaching requirements. If we determined that our clinical teaching might be compromised, we would have to show opposition,” Stanton said in the statement. “However, if that does not appear to be the case, we would be happy to engage in a dialogue with King College and its representatives on collaborative possibilities to develop a win-win approach.”

As part of its bid to establish the medical school, King plans to create a five-state regional commission to address physician shortage issues with health-care providers, medical schools, legislators and others.

“We would like to begin the planning phase in spring 2009, followed by development of the curriculum, hiring of a dean and then the faculty,” Jordan said. Classes could begin by 2012.

Joel Staton, the mayor of Bristol, Tenn., who attended Thursday’s announcement, said the city hasn’t been asked about providing assistance and didn’t know what, if any, resources it could supply.

Bristol, Va., Mayor Jim Rector, who also attended Thursday’s announcement, said his city also hasn’t been asked, but would “have to study” what, if any, assistance it or the state could direct to the project.

Both leaders touted the possible economic impact, which the study showed could be $60 million initially, with the potential to expand.

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