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Updated November 20, 2008 09:53:57 PM
King College details plans for med school

By Rick Wagner
NET News Service

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BRISTOL — King College plans to open a medical school somewhere near hospitals in Bristol or Kingsport by 2012, college President Greg Jordan announced Thursday.
“It has been a process that’s been under way quietly for two years,” Jordan said of a feasibility study by the Pittsburgh-based Tripp Umbach consulting firm.

Jordan’s remarks came after a morning news conference at the Presbyterian-affiliated liberal arts college. He cited the need to help avert an impending physician shortage, particularly specialists, and data from consultant Paul Umbach on the need for more physicians in the five-state area within 150 miles of Bristol.

Jordan also touted the economic benefit of the allopathic school on the region, including a payroll of 400 employees. The projected initial impact the first year of operation is $62 million, eventually growing to $325 million and topping $500 million if a medical corridor develops. Jordan said the school has input and support from the area’s two dominant hospital systems, Sullivan County-based Wellmont Health System and Johnson City-based Mountain States Health Alliance, and Holston Medical Group.

“This makes sense in every way,” Jordan said.

Jordan said the timeline for the school is for planning to get under way in the spring of 2009, followed by development of the curriculum, appointment of a dean, hiring of faculty and development of the medical campus, following by the first class starting studies in 2012.

He said the King College medical school would work with existing medical schools, including the four-year allopathic one at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City and the four-year osteopathic medical school at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate.

“In our very region, there will be a shortage of 6,500 physicians (in five to eight years),” Jordan said.

Of those, he said 4,800 would be vacant positions for specialists.

“What will we do when we cannot access a cardiologist?” Jordan asked.

He said the problem is because of more demand from an aging population and aging doctors who are retiring.

Unlike the heated political battle waged in the early 1970s to get federal approval for the medical school at ETSU, Jordan said the shortage of physicians and data on underserved medical areas in the region should make federal approval not nearly as contentious.

Among federally designated underserved areas — based on too few primary care providers, high infant mortality, high poverty and/or high elderly populations — are Carter, Greene, Hancock, Hawkins, Johnson and Unicoi counties in Tennessee, along with Buchanan, Dickenson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington and Wise counties and the city of Bristol in Virginia. They are among 38 localities in the 150-mile radius.

Sullivan County didn’t make the list, but other counties in North Carolina, Kentucky and West Virginia did.

Bristol Motor Speedway General Manager Jeff Byrd, chairman of the King College board of trustees, said the Bristol and Kingsport areas were under consideration for the main campus, while Umbach and Jordan said Tennessee and Virginia locations would be considered.

Umbach, who has helped launch five medical schools, said the basic sciences campus mostly for first- and second-year students could be separate from the clinical campus for third- and fourth-year students.

The Association of American Medical Colleges and Council on Graduate Medical Education are calling for more medical school graduates to meet a projected shortfall of 85,000 to 200,000 physicians in five to eight years. The AAMC has called for a 30 percent increase (4,946) in medical school students by 2015, while COGME has called for 3,000 new medical graduates by 2015.

Dr. Jerry Miller, founder of Kingsport-based Holston Medical Group, said HMG is 32 physicians short now.

The practice in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia has 158 doctors and 245,000 active patients, with almost 50,000 seeing a doctor each month. It also picks up 1,500 new patients a month.

“I am growing a new family practice every three months,” Miller said.

He said 80 percent of his new physicians are foreign medical students who are excellent doctors.

“But it’s difficult to introduce them to Duffield, Va.,” he said.

And the ultimate ... head in the sand approach...

http://www.johnsoncitypress.com/Detail.p...S&ID=65866
ETSU willing to collaborate with King if Quillen not hurt



An artist’s rendering of what King College’s proposed medical school could look like. (Contributed/King College)


By Rex Barber
Press Staff Writer
rbarber@johnsoncitypress.com

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East Tennessee State University expressed a willingness to establish a collaborative relationship with King College in Bristol should that school further develop its medical program, provided clinical instruction at the James H. Quillen College of Medicine is not compromised.
In a statement released Thursday, ETSU President Paul Stanton said he was informed Tuesday that King planned to create a medical school. Stanton described his conversation with King President Greg Jordan earlier this week as “very cordial.”

##### Stanton said he had not anticipated King’s intentions, which had been in the planning stages for some time. ##########

“I did voice concerns to the president regarding start-up and continuing costs, which for a medical school are approximately $100,000 per student per year,” Stanton said in the prepared release. “At private colleges, these costs are typically higher.”

Stanton also requested data from King’s consultants justifying the need for a medical school. He said he was concerned that ETSU’s clinical teaching sites in hospitals and outpatient settings could suffer, but did not indicate how that could lessen ETSU’s program.

“Our accrediting body has specific mandates that address clinical teaching requirements,” Stanton said in the release. “If we determined that our clinical teaching might be compromised, we would have to show opposition.”

Stanton did say that ETSU would pursue collaborative possibilities should King’s proposal not interfere with its operations.

ETSU’s College of Medicine was established in large part by efforts of the late 1st District Congressman James H. “Jimmy” Quillen. The bill creating the school was passed by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1974. The first class of 24 students began studies in the college in August 1978. The first class received degrees in May 1982.

The College of Medicine had 245 medical students enrolled at the beginning of the semester and 266 physicians enrolled in residency and fellowship programs.

Tennessee currently has five medical schools, including ETSU’s. Two of those are located in Nashville; Meharry Medical College School of Medicine and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Knoxville has the University of Tennessee College of Medicine. Harrogate has Lincoln Memorial University DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine.

I thought King was supposed to start football. Whatever happened to that?

Dale Burns became their athletic director.

But that's a great line.

So now in one week, Stanton closes the Bristol campus and King creates a medical school, which he was oblivious to.

I used to think ETSU was the college of the Tri-Cities. It seems now it is the college of only Johnson City and Kingsport.

Not Kingsport. Northeast State is the college of Kingsport.

Did Stanton miss another opportunity here? The reason I say that is I can't fathom that Wellmont, who already has a relationship with ETSU medical students, wouldn't come to ETSU first about this "dire need." You've got an established school that you don't have to invest MILLIONS of your hard earned capital into, why wouldn't you ask ETSU first? Or even better, if King comes to you and says they want to start a school and need financial help, why wouldn't they check with ETSU first?

The simple answer has to be because you don't have a good relationship with ETSU. I think Wellmont has probably been "snubbed" by the ETSU administration somewhere along the way and that is what's caused them to invest millions to bring another school to a small area like the Tri-Cities. This has got 'bad working relationship' written all over it, and this isn't the first time we've seen this type of bumbling from ETSU.

I can't see how the ETSU med school can be anything but weaker after something like this. Somebody should have seen this coming.

00 this is nothing new. Wellmont has been in bed with King and some of their powerful financial backers for some time.

So now it should be clear to all that not everyone at the med school or the medical community at large love Stanton. Far from it.

Some legacy.

BucDoctor Wrote:00 this is nothing new. Wellmont has been in bed with King and some of their powerful financial backers for some time.

But it still begs the question why would they? Regardless of when it happened, at some point Wellmont has felt threatened by the relationship between ETSU and Mountain States Health and decided to pursue some sort of competition. This makes no sense except to hurt Mountain States and ETSU along with them. King probably thinks, "great, we'll get a med school out of this deal" while in fact neither will prosper. They'll be fighting over access and patients, especially pediatrics and ob/gyn (like was mentioned in the article today).

I guarantee you somewhere along the way, Wellmont wanted more involvement from ETSU's med school and didn't find what they were looking for. This could have and should have been prevented by the leadership at ETSU, but yet again, they were blind-sided.

BUT,
etsu is the university of choice,
it's the best regional university in the nation,
with a premiere men's and women's basketball program,
and a pharmacy school that developed a miracle cure for a president that had health problems so bad he wanted to retire,
and new dorms that won't house the largest growing demographic at etsu (age 26 and older),
and no concerts because they overspent the budget,
and an athletics fee that pays for tennis trips to nowhere and golf trips to paradise,
and a bell tower that chimes so the 100 people at the soccer field can hear it,
and a cool-ass dinasour bone place to visit,
and a med school that realizes state funding per student to the tune of $95,000

ETSU, out of touch, out of time!!!!!!!!

Quote:BucDoctor: I guarantee you somewhere along the way, Wellmont wanted more involvement from ETSU's med school and didn't find what they were looking for. This could have and should have been prevented by the leadership at ETSU...

You are correct, sir! Look no further than Dennis Vonderfecht for the source of this problem. The tension between MSHA (and their massive debt) vs. Wellmont is behind this educational rift. He is nothing but a power-hungry (would be) empire builder, with what is best for the patient far down the priority list.

Amazingly coincident, I had not yet seen this when I posted what I did above:

the price of an empire

While I'm mildly concerned about King's proposed med school having negative effects on ETSU, I'm more concerned (since these threads are mainly about athletics) about news this past week that two ETSU baseball players have transferred to King. One being Nick Belcher who I believe was a starting pitcher. I'd be interested to find out "whassup".

You would have to have been on a different planet to not realize that Wellmont and Mtn States have been at each others throat for a long time! Theres definitely no "abundance mentality" between the two, and, ETSU and King may just be pawns in the continued rivalry(?).

MSHA has had the College of Medicine in it's back pocket since at least when Stanton was Dean.

If King gets the Med school it will hurt ETSU and the COM very much, they will no longer be able to play the two systems against each other.

I never saw all of the funding from the two health systems into the COM but what I did see was that Wellmont was funding at a higher rate than MSHA and getting less for it, so it was a matter of time before Wellmont did something. The population base isn't large enough for two schools, they will both be competing for the same resources, both cannot thrive. I blame most of this on Stanton. It is not that Wellmont was getting screwed so much as MSHA all ways seemed to get the best deal. I used to think it was because Stanton was going to get some political benefit from this, but now I don't know why he always caved to Vonderfect?

The state of TN is also to blame for not funding higher education enough. The COM runs on nothing compared to other Med Schools. The COM should be 25-50% larger, but because of funding (and poor business decisions) it is diffcult to increase size.

I fault Stanton (and previous) COM Deans for poor business strategy. Since the COM is so poorly funded by the state, they have no room for error in their strategic planning for their business operations, i.e. Vanderbilt can just thow money at something when they make a business mistake, ETSU can't. ETSU's Medical business operations are very good operationaly, but from a strategic perspective down right comical. Stanton is not businessman, he is a politican. The strategic decisions of the last 10 years has put the COM, 20 years behind where they should be. I could write a book.

The only way Stanton will be able to see a way out of this, is political, because his lack of business acumen is what created this problem.

All of this is MHO of course.

Lot of truth there. I think most of us know how poorly the state *is able* to fund the med school. The loss of several key chairs in the '90s was a big blow, and that was mostly about funding issues. Those were good people who left. We have never really recovered from that situation. I won't get into the debacle that is Internal Medicine, as that near-collapse of the major income arm of the med school is it's own story - although of course extremely relevant to the financial picture now.
paulie has had several people snowed with his personality, which can be charming in some contexts. The stanton/vonderfect combination has been ruinous for the financial health of MSHA and the med school, "imho, of course".........

[I guess I can't pass up this semi-tangent: I think it's been near-criminal to ask the people of this area to fund the "children's hospital", all the while planning to build another big one, AND all the while carrying the immense amount of debt (and interest thereon) resulting from their expansionary complex. Someone needs to write a book on this subject. Once again the lack of investigative reporting in this area has kept the majority of the people in this area in the dark about all these things.
Brian Smith - want something to do for the next 2 or 3 years?]

Guys, this thing is bigger than the olympic soccer team, Ludacris, or the magic-morphing computer screen. Either way, it is some of the biggest news about ETSU not to come out of ETSU. This is a huge blow to the university and the med school if this thing comes to fruition at King. It will set them back decades, no doubt.

I honestly think they must have had the "who cares, they can't hurt us anyway" mentality going on at ETSU, and now they're finding out the harsh reality. Similar to the dropping football debacle. Somebody has got to stop the bleeding over there.

I really don't know anything about the ins and outs of the medical school...but are we saying that this will add more damage to Stantons legacy?

It would probably be fair to say this will do to the med school what dropping football did to athletics. Anybody see it different?

I think it's far more complex than that. If by some chance Vonderfect's head should roll because of things coming to light, then some good will come out of this, albeit a decade too late.
The implications of this could be immense. I understand from some contacts within King that this move is legitimate, but supposedly their president is full of ideas - some come to fruition, and some do not. It's clear that the administration of King College is forward-thinking and progressive, and making some real noise in a multitude of areas. I happen to know their financial situation is better than Milligan's or VI's, but that's not saying much.

One could even see an additive effect far down the road - like 15-20 years. After the initial 'pain', this could actually be a positive, and give the Tri-Cites true legitimacy as a medical "destination" point like the Triad (but on a smaller scale, of course). That article is not wrong that the TN government has not funded ETSU's school adequately, but since when was the TN government progressive? To say that they "don't get it" is an understatement. If Wellmont had been allowed to build that hospital on St. of Franklin, then this probably would not have happened. Vonderfect has done everything in his power to stymie Wellmont at EVERY turn. Anyone want to guess how much interest MSHA pays each year on their debt? I don't know the figure off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure it would astound those of you not aware of it. (It should be public knowledge, but I would bet you'd have a hard time getting that info.) That's why it galls me that they dare ask the girl scouts, local tennis organizations, private individuals, and whatever organization they can think of to finance this children's hospital.

That this could be this far along in the planning process without stanton getting wind of it is quite remarkable. That no one at all tipped him off means that more than likely Wellmont is handling most or all of the background work. IF this proceeds, it will get *real* interesting. If not, then at ETSU it'll be the same ol' same ol', except worse because then they'll feel more secure in their status quo. But let me be clear, the med school's financial shape is not good at all. Hopefully, bottom has been hit, but too early to tell........