SPOKANE — University of Washington President Mark Emmert said Spokane will have a four-year medical school program as soon as state budget constraints allow.
Emmert made the comments Wednesday to the annual meeting of Greater Spokane Incorporated.
Some first-year students of the UW School of Medicine have studied in Spokane for two years, and boosters want to expand that to a four-year program.
Emmert said that when the financial resources can be obtained, the UW wants to take the best from the Seattle campus and add innovations like simulators that enable students to practice surgeries without touching a human body. “Spokane would be a great site for developing those tools,” he said.
Washington State University President Elson Floyd, who was paired with Emmert during the speech to the economic development agency, said the universities want to build the program at the Riverpoint Campus in Spokane and at area medical centers.
A market study to determine how many students Spokane could accommodate will begin soon, Floyd said. The Legislature appropriated $4.3 million for preliminary design work on a bio-medical/health sciences building that would house the program.
Rich Hadley, president of GSI, said 80 to 120 students might enroll annually, depending on the cost of creating a second-year curriculum to advance students to third- and fourth-year courses.
The first-year medical training in Spokane started after the Legislature expanded Washington’s participation in a medical school program called WWAMI — the first such expansion in the program’s 37-year history.
Under WWAMI, Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho pay to reserve medical school positions. Students pay in-state tuition and take their first-year courses at participating universities in each state, with identical curriculum and final exams as those offered at UW in Seattle.
All second-year WWAMI students go to UW. But they could end up anywhere in the region for their third- and fourth-year clinical rotations.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
