Stakeholders in the Phoenix medical school gathered in a House conference room this month to discuss a thorny issue — what role, if any, might an existing medical university play in the future of the school?

The answer was crucial to the budget deal that finally appropriated $7 million in start-up funding for the downtown campus of the University of Arizona College of Medicine.

“The room was packed,” said Kathleen Goeppinger, president and chief executive officer at Midwestern University in Glendale. The private university is the home of the Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine that, as of June 3, will have graduated 804 doctors of osteopathy, or DOs, since 1995.

The problem for Midwestern, Ms. Geoppinger said, is that 40 per cent of its third and fourth-year medical students have had to pursue their clinical training out of state because of the long-standing policy at Arizona teaching hospitals to give preference to UofA allopathic, or MD, students.

Legislators who initially opposed funding for the Phoenix medical campus criticized the UofA for its lack of cooperation with Midwestern.

“Are they [Midwestern] going to be a participant or are they going to be locked out?” asked Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Burns after an April 28 committee meeting, where Republicans voted down an appropriation for the UofA medical school.

Sensing that funding would not be approved without dealing with the Midwestern problem, the stakeholder meeting, which included Dr. Keith Joiner, dean of the College of Medicine, Sens. Robert Cannell, D-24, and Carolyn Allen, R-8, Rep. Tom Boone, R-4, hospital representatives and several lobbyists, came to an agreement on language to be included in the new higher education bill (S1517).

What The Bill Says

“A public or private medical school in this state shall not prohibit a hospital from entering into an agreement to provide student clinical rotations to qualified osteopathic or allopathic medical students,” states the bill, which was signed by the governor May 20.

Ms. Goeppinger said that of the current 137 third-year students at Midwestern, 31 per cent have had to leave the state for hospital training because clinical rotations were not available to them, and 46 per cent of fourth-year students went out of state for their hospital training.

Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center says more than 30 per cent of its fourth-year medical students are from Midwestern, and St. Joseph’s says about 20 per cent of its trainees are DO students.

Ms. Goeppinger said the provision in the higher education bill will enhance the opportunities for DO students to train in Arizona hospitals.

“Dr. Joiner made it clear he was optimistic this would happen,” Ms. Goeppinger said, adding that in-state training will enhance the chances that DOs will stay in the state.

“If the student has a good feeling about that hospital,” she said, he or she would be more likely to practice in Arizona.

Midwestern, UofA and hospitals officials will be meeting to determine what clinical teaching arrangements will be available this fall.

Ms. Goeppinger said that with the growth of new hospitals and hospital expansions, there will be enough training slots for all third and forth-year MD and DO students. She also said she would like to see cooperation between the UofA and Midwestern, whereby professors could be on each school’s adjunct faculties.

The clinical training provision in the bill, assurances from the UofA that the Phoenix school will focus on graduating students who choose practice over research and compromises on other parts of the budget between Republican leaders and Ms. Napolitano, paved the way for legislative approval of funding for the medical school, although future state funding remains uncertain.

As part of the deal struck on the higher education bill, the medical school will receive $3 million in July and $3 million no later than Oct. 5, after the Board of Regents submits short and long-term operational and capital budgets and a 20-year financing plan to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee for review.

The bill also appropriates $1 million for the department of biomedical informatics at Arizona State University and establishes a joint committee on medical school education.

It passed the Senate 27-2 and the House 49-8, with Tucson Rep. Ted Downing the only Democrat no vote.

The April 27 groundbreaking ceremony for the Phoenix medical campus at the site of the old Phoenix Union High School was cancelled because state funding was still in question at the time.

It had not been decided at press time May 26 whether the event would be rescheduled, said Susan Guthrie, public affair coordinator. She said the budget agreement came as good news, but school officials were not discouraged prior to the vote.

“We were jubilant, overjoyed,” she said. “We always remained hopeful because it was best for the state.”

The first class of 24 medical students — third and fourth-year students from the UofA — will open in July 2006, and the first freshmen class will be admitted in 2007. Applicants must be Arizona residents.

The school plans to eventually have 150 students per year. —