Published: June 18, 2008 12:14 am      

Boosting rural medicine

UK to launch med school satellite campus at MSU

MOREHEAD — The University of Kentucky plans to open a regional medical school site at Morehead State University, part of a push to bring more physicians to rural parts of the state.

The program, scheduled for startup in 2010, will recruit up to 10 students in 2008 and another 10 in 2009, raising first-year enrollment from 103 to 113.

Students will complete their first two years of medical school at UK’s Lexington campus and then the next two years at Morehead, where they will work in cooperation with St. Claire Regional Medical Center.

To meet the demand for rural doctors, UK wants to increase its medical school class size by about 30 percent over the next few years, said Dr. Jay Perman, dean of the UK College of Medicine and vice president for clinical affairs.

Ultimately, UK wants to have 133 medical students per class, the number it needs to stave off a physician shortage in the state, Perman said.

Already, Kentucky has 2,000 fewer physicians than it needs, he said. Currently there are 260 doctors per 100,000 population in the United States; Kentucky’s ratio is 215 per 100,000.

The shortage is more acute outside of urban areas.

“There is a disproportionately larger shortage of rural physicians,” Perman said.

Recruiting and training physicians in rural areas auch as Rowan County makes it more likely they’ll practice in similar areas.

“If we give them a rich clinical experience in the opportunities they’ll have in a rural practice, they’ll be more likely to return there,” Perman said.

Further, their teachers and mentors will come largely from the rural medicine environment and will serve as role models, he said.

The program will be in the yet-to-be-built Center for Health Education and Research at MSU. Groundbreaking for the center is scheduled for August.

MSU is building the center in partnership with UK and St. Claire Regional Medical Center. It will be across Second Street from the hospital.

MSU is excited about the medical school endeavor, said its president, Wayne Andrews.

“Research reveals that if you can recruit a student from a rural community to a program that prepares for rural practice, the success rate is huge,” he said.

The health education and research center is to serve as the primary training site for the program and will include examination rooms, a laboratory and radiology facilities.

It also will house the nursing and imaging sciences departments, UK’s physician assistant and nurse practitioner programs and a health education center.

UK plans to launch a second center in Murray as early as 2012.

It already has several collaborative programs with MSU and St. Claire, including an affiliation with Markey Cancer Center.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2652.