Should Maine create a public medical school? UMaine System will study the question
PHOTO / COURTESY, UNIVERSITY OF MAINE
The University of Maine System will partner with a national medical education consultant to study the feasibility of starting the state’s first public medical school.
The University of Maine System said this week it will work with a national consultant to study the feasibility of launching the state’s first public medical school.
The consultant's work will consider establishing an M.D.-granting institution in Penobscot County, likely affiliated with the University of Maine.
The initiative responds to a critical shortage of physicians in rural Maine, according to a news release.
“As with Maine in general, our physician population is aging,” said Dr. James Jarvis, Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center’s director of clinical education. “It has been difficult to keep pace with retirements and demographic shifts to fulfill the health care needs of northern Maine.”
The concept has received support from the Maine Hospital Association, the Maine Primary Care Association and Northern Light Health. UMS received state funding last year to undertake the study.
The feasibility study and its recommendations are due to the Maine Legislature in November 2025.
Jarvis said a new medical school in Penobscot County might spark interest among current physicians to move to Maine as well as build a sustainable physician workforce for the future.
The study comes as Maine’s only medical school — the University of New England’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, which began in 1978 — prepares to move from Biddeford to a $93 million, newly expanded campus in Portland. The school says the new quarters will allow it to increase class size from 165 to 200 students per year, and will help promote an “interprofessional” approach to education.
“The University of New England is always eager to partner with our colleagues at the University of Maine System and is proud of the mutually beneficial partnerships we have established with the system,” James Herbert, UNE’s president told Mainebiz.
He continued, “In addition to this study, we also hope the state will also look critically at the primary cause of the doctor shortage, which is not a shortage of medical students but rather Maine’s shortage of clinical training opportunities, including residency programs.
"Data show that placements are key to retaining newly trained doctors in the state, and, without addressing this issue, newly graduated doctors will be forced to leave Maine, highly increasing the probability that they will establish their careers elsewhere.”
Multiple-part question
Following a competitive request that generated multiple proposals, the University of Maine System selected Tripp Umbach, a private consulting firm headquartered in Kansas City, Mo., with offices throughout the U.S., according to its LinkedIn page.
Tripp Umbach was chosen by UMS in part because of its extensive experience in graduate medical education models, including multistate medical education programs, health system-driven medical schools and state pathway programs with out-of-state medical schools, according to the release.
As part of the study, UMS and Tripp Umbach will communicate with various parties throughout Maine, including local and state health care organizations, state and federal health care and veterans agencies, research institutions, other medical education providers, policymakers and associations such as those representing hospitals, physicians and primary care providers.
The study will consider whether a public medical school is necessary for Maine and what resources — including funding, personnel, laboratories and equipment — would be required if a new school was planned.
Any proposal to establish a medical school within the system would require a public review process and approval by the UMS board of trustees, as well as significant public and philanthropic support.
“We appreciate that Maine policymakers and health care leaders see our university as central to addressing the state’s health care workforce shortages, which are particularly acute in rural regions where we are so strongly rooted and include the need for more physicians,” said Joan Ferrini-Mundy, UMaine’s president and the system’s vice chancellor for research and innovation.
Other work underway
The UMS board of trustees is authorized to operate a college of medicine and confer the degree of Doctor of Medicine, but the public university system has never had the resources to do so. Instead, it has focused on other education and research initiatives related to health and well-being.
Last year, Maine’s public universities produced 894 health care graduates and brought tens of millions of dollars in related research investment to the state, mostly through UMaine and the University of Southern Maine's Catherine Cutler Institute.
UMaine is also the degree-granting institution that anchors Maine’s Graduate School of Biomedical Science and Engineering, a multi-institutional education and research consortium that includes the Jackson Laboratory, the MaineHealth Institute of Research, the MDI Biological Laboratory and the University of New England.
In 2018, UMaine launched its Institute of Medicine to coordinate the institution’s growing activities and partnerships in health and life science education and research.
Earlier this year, the University of Maine said its Institute of Medicine would lead a pilot partnership with the University of Southern Maine that may help advance the field of medicine.
The University of Maine at Augusta has plans underway to grow enrollment for its nursing program with the construction of a larger facility, and UMA installed a larger medical lab training facility as part of its medical lab training program in collaboration with the University of Maine Presque Isle.
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Yes! NO! Yes - we need an instate med school. No it should not be government run. This med school issue has been discussed for decades - maybe as far back as the days of Maine General Hospital. It was the impetus for MMC to develop working relationships with Dartmouth, Vermont, Boston med schools, Tufts and others, to attract interns and residents to our doorstep.
By the mid-80s, it became clear that Maine had many if not most of the tools in place to start the discussion in earnest. And what skills were not already in place MMC took the training internal - training a high standard of CNA's and Orderlies, Xray Technicians, Lab Rats (the kind that draw blood included), and so on right up the hierarchy.
The problem was getting ALL the necessary colleges to come together without the fear that a certain entity wanted to dominate the horizon. An independent med school was and will be highly preferred to losing our best students to out of state schools.
MMC had such expertise. But they didn't have the surplus of physicians that allowed for both educators and practitioners. As of this writing, that is likely the biggest challenge. If you're going to convert a meaningful teaching staff, you'll extract the best of the best locally, which means there will be vacancies on the front line.
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