CSNbbs

(10-01-2014 08:31 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote: [ -> ]http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/ed...3f0c8a9#/0

HBU will have a med school before Rice.

(10-01-2014 08:31 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote: [ -> ]http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/ed...3f0c8a9#/0

UH (the real one) already has a Med School in Honolulu!

(10-16-2014 12:04 PM)exowlswimmer Wrote: [ -> ]

(10-01-2014 08:31 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote: [ -> ]http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/ed...3f0c8a9#/0

UH (the real one) already has a Med School in Honolulu!

Not so sure I would call Univ of Hawaii the "real" UH . They have plenty of problems. ( Unless of course , the one w the most problems is, by definition, the "real" UH!

I think the best basis on which to make that argument is probably age.

Maybe it's time to go back to the table with BCOM. If they can't or won't break their ties with Baylor, then it's time for Rice to build its own medical school. Surely this would excite the majority of the alumni base including those not currently actively engaged. As for the UH, they can always focus on allied health.

(10-17-2014 06:09 AM)MerseyOwl Wrote: [ -> ]Maybe it's time to go back to the table with BCOM. If they can't or won't break their ties with Baylor, then it's time for Rice to build its own medical school. Surely this would excite the majority of the alumni base including those not currently actively engaged. As for the UH, they can always focus on allied health.

At this point it is probably cheaper for Rice to start from scratch than to pursue BCOM. The attractiveness of BCOM was that from the first day it would be a nationally recognized medical school. That will take time with a startup. But given the way academic institutions are perceived these days, a med school is an absolute essential if Rice seeks to achieve higher regard than it has now. That may not be fair or sensible or right, but that's the way it is.

I'm not completely sure that starting from scratch is cheaper. I'm thinking it would be in the hundreds of millions. Bricks mortar. Salaries. Etc. Of course aquiring BCOM would not have the building costs but it's financial obligations are pretty high.
I'd love to see it done but I just don't think it will happen. It seems like we are stretched fairly thin, especially considering that we are just now getting back to pre-Great Recession endowment levels.

I don't think the cost to start a new med school would be all that great. Class size would be 25-50/class

You need a lecture hall, anatomy lab, and microbiology lab.

First 2 year classes are basically biochem, anatomy/physiology, microbiology, pharmacology, pathology, and biostatistics which could be covered by many of the current facilities and faculty. The BRC already does health research and has the capacity to grow.

3rd & 4th year clerckships can be done at affiliated hospitals rather inexpensively.

Using UC Riverside as an example of a new med school, their budget started at $15 million/yr and got increased to the average medical school budget of about $30 million/yr. Tying this all together, a medical school will cost you less than half the cost of a P5 football team.

(10-17-2014 12:18 PM)ruowls Wrote: [ -> ]I don't think the cost to start a new med school would be all that great. Class size would be 25-50/class

You need a lecture hall, anatomy lab, and microbiology lab.

First 2 year classes are basically biochem, anatomy/physiology, microbiology, pharmacology, pathology, and biostatistics which could be covered by many of the current facilities and faculty. The BRC already does health research and has the capacity to grow.

3rd & 4th year clerckships can be done at affiliated hospitals rather inexpensively.

Using UC Riverside as an example of a new med school, their budget started at $15 million/yr and got increased to the average medical school budget of about $30 million/yr. Tying this all together, a medical school will cost you less than half the cost of a P5 football team.

Then why hasn't it been done already? Seems like such a natural thing for Rice.

I agree Loki,

All I can figure is that to start from scratch would be like we did with Jones... and the school struggled in the rankings in the early days and was too small to create any relevance. Obviously they hit some serious strides and created a niche and are now among the best in the world, but early on they were actually (as I recall but can't swear to it) seen as a 'drag' on our reputation.

Given how deep we already are into the disciplines that RU mentions, as well as the relationships that we already have with the NIH, TMC, BCM and others through the BRC... I'd say that risk is somewhat less than it was for Jones... but it isn't 'zero'.

Perhaps there is some way to fund it as a free-standing entity with 'ties' to Rice and the other entities, and then at some point, bring it in-house (assuming things go as we want them to) at a later date? Obviously it makes it tougher for us to use endowment funds to help support it, but I suspect there is SOME way to do that.

I'm all for this idea. In the grand scheme of things, 30 million seems paltry .. considering the added prestige, etc.
Which makes me think there's a lot more to it than meets the eye.
If it's only 30 million or so... why haven't we done it years ago? Why even try to buy Baylor Med? Especially since we knew about their considerable debt.
I'm all in for the concept. I just think it's gonna be a lot more than 30 mil.

(10-17-2014 02:44 PM)greyowl72 Wrote: [ -> ]I'm all for this idea. In the grand scheme of things, 30 million seems paltry .. considering the added prestige, etc.
Which makes me think there's a lot more to it than meets the eye.
If it's only 30 million or so... why haven't we done it years ago? Why even try to buy Baylor Med? Especially since we knew about their considerable debt.
I'm all in for the concept. I just think it's gonna be a lot more than 30 mil.

As best I can tell, the expense lies in the research aspect of the med school. To attract researchers, the school invests in lab space and lab equipment. This can get pretty expensive pretty quickly. Rice already has this covered with the BRC so it doesn't need to invest in this.

The other big expense is with health care delivery, i.e. the hospital. A medical school doesn't need to operate it's own hospital. I believe a big part of BCM's debt came from their attempt to build and run their own hospital. The building is currently just a shell and has sat vacant for years. In other words, don't start one if you don't have one. The reimbursement incentives for medical education through healthcare delivery have been drastically reduced over the last 20 years. A hospital is a business that currently isn't incentivized to teach.

Of course, everyone knows I like to pass on 4th down too despite the evidence on this board that that is a bad thing to do.

(10-17-2014 02:44 PM)greyowl72 Wrote: [ -> ]I'm all for this idea. In the grand scheme of things, 30 million seems paltry .. considering the added prestige, etc.
Which makes me think there's a lot more to it than meets the eye.
If it's only 30 million or so... why haven't we done it years ago? Why even try to buy Baylor Med? Especially since we knew about their considerable debt.
I'm all in for the concept. I just think it's gonna be a lot more than 30 mil.

Well, 30mm is the average annual expense of a medical school.... according to all of the articles that RU references regarding UC riverside... in fact, they STARTED the school with an annual budget of just $15mm/yr.

The $1byn we thought about spending on pretty highly regarded BCM would probably put out about $50mm per year as an endowment (I didn't miss a zero, did I?) , so I don't think that number would be way off. Obviously Baylor is above average, so their expenses would be above average.

When you consider that the average enrollment of a medical school is probably only about 4-500 students, that seems about right. Riverside started with 50 in its initial class, so an initial enrollment target of only 200. BCM is about 750.

(10-17-2014 03:17 PM)Hambone10 Wrote: [ -> ]

(10-17-2014 02:44 PM)greyowl72 Wrote: [ -> ]I'm all for this idea. In the grand scheme of things, 30 million seems paltry .. considering the added prestige, etc.
Which makes me think there's a lot more to it than meets the eye.
If it's only 30 million or so... why haven't we done it years ago? Why even try to buy Baylor Med? Especially since we knew about their considerable debt.
I'm all in for the concept. I just think it's gonna be a lot more than 30 mil.

Well, 30mm is the average annual expense of a medical school.... according to all of the articles that RU references regarding UC riverside... in fact, they STARTED the school with an annual budget of just $15mm/yr.

The $1byn we thought about spending on pretty highly regarded BCM would probably put out about $50mm per year as an endowment (I didn't miss a zero, did I?) , so I don't think that number would be way off. Obviously Baylor is above average, so their expenses would be above average.

When you consider that the average enrollment of a medical school is probably only about 4-500 students, that seems about right. Riverside started with 50 in its initial class, so an initial enrollment target of only 200. BCM is about 750.

Unconventional wisdom, how about a public private partnership. Cornell is private, with certain disciplines that are public and state supported. TAMU bought a law school and turned it into a quasi-public stand alone trade school with an upgraded brand name. UT-Houston, MD Anderson and Rice would be a powerhouse and in the rebranding the Med school with the Rice name certainly wouldn't hurt them. The faded original UT medical school in Galveston could use an upgrade and wouldn't hurt the "Rice" brand. Heck, we could even buy one of the overseas Caribbean med schools or partner in China. Do something!

This post of mine from the USNWR rankings thread is germane here.

(09-30-2014 05:49 PM)illiniowl Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-23-2014 04:33 PM)loki_the_bubba Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-23-2014 04:10 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: [ -> ]The lack of med and law schools would be the primary reason why Rice does not rank higher. I've parsed the USN&WR and one other ranking previously, calculated the results with med and law schools added, and posted previously (and don't have time to look them up now). We would go into the top ten with them per my calculations (which I think are at least very reasonably accurate). The primary impact would be the research dollars that go with a med school. At Rice, there would be a significant potential upside with a law school developing programs jointly with the Jones School and the Baker Center.

Of the schools listed above us, Princeton and Cal Tech have neither law nor medicine, MIT and Dartmouth have no law school, and Notre Dame no medical school. I believe everybody else has both.

Does anyone have any idea what it would take to start a med or law school? A billion dollars for med? A hundred million for law? These are just ignorant numbers I'm throwing out. Does anyone have a better idea?

(This question was rattling around my head when I bought a lottery ticket last time it went above $500mm. The Loki Medical School of Rice University has a nice ringn to it.)

Interesting front-page article in today's Chicago Tribune. The University of Illinois wants to start its own med school (at least in part to counteract its own ongoing rankings decline). They are saying they can do it without any new state funding, relying instead on a partnership with a private healthcare company that will kick in $100MM over 10 years, with "tuition, grants and contracts, patient fees and the commercialization of medical technology" providing the rest of the needed revenue. They envision the school as being especially tied to engineering and computing science (disciplines in which U of I is very strong) and granting Ph.D.-M.D. degrees.

So, maybe you wouldn't need as big of a lottery win as you might think to endow a med school...

So, (a) the startup costs for a med school are not as daunting as one might think; (b) corporate partnership could even provide much of the funding; © U of I's idea to create a biotech/engineering-focused med school and degree programs to leverage its excellent reputation in those areas is an idea tailor-made for Rice; and (d) there is actually a demand for more med schools (in stark contrast to law schools).

However, you'd have to think the Rice administration & BOT are well aware of all of these points and more, and of what a med school could do for Rice as a whole. So our inaction on the med school front since the failed BCOM acquisition says to me that there must be sufficient countervailing reasons for us not to go the startup route?

If the idea of starting a med school is to boost our reputation, then we should be looking at the cost of top med schools, not average ones. That said, there are surely good arguments for having a med school even if it doesn't elevate our reputation any higher.

And I agree with exowlswimmer on "do something!" I've mentioned before that I'm currently at UofChicago. Here it feels like there is a (legitimately) major announcement every other week. Every time I hear these announcements I'm a little happy but a also little sad that I don't hear similar things from Rice.

(10-17-2014 05:41 PM)illiniowl Wrote: [ -> ]However, you'd have to think the Rice administration & BOT are well aware of all of these points and more, and of what a med school could do for Rice as a whole. So our inaction on the med school front since the failed BCOM acquisition says to me that there must be sufficient countervailing reasons for us not to go the startup route?

The other possibility is that Rice is pursuing the startup route, but playing it closer to the vest than the BCM merger. That is pure speculation on my part though.

(10-17-2014 05:43 PM)ChicagoOwl (BS 07) Wrote: [ -> ]If the idea of starting a med school is to boost our reputation, then we should be looking at the cost of top med schools, not average ones. That said, there are surely good arguments for having a med school even if it doesn't elevate our reputation any higher.

One point. An average med school would boost our reputation materially. Crazy, but that's the way things work.

A BCM would boost it hugely, but an average med school would still boost it. I'm guessing the reluctance is still cost related. It's an expensive enough proposition to impose some serious risks.

(10-17-2014 05:43 PM)ChicagoOwl (BS 07) Wrote: [ -> ]If the idea of starting a med school is to boost our reputation, then we should be looking at the cost of top med schools, not average ones.

FYI:

UC-San Francisco (USNews #4 in both research & primary care) took in $4.14 billion ($2.2 from its medical center) with expenses of $4.01 billion.

Stanford (University) Hospital & Clinics (USNews #2 in research and #38 in primary care) (have) nearly $4 billion in 2013 operating revenue and $400 million in net income that year (including Lucile Packard Children's Hospital).