AUGUST 2000

NEW MEDICAL SCHOOL TO OPEN AT FSU

By Jan Pudlow
Special to the Florida State Times

House Speaker John Thrasher cheered the new Florida State University College of Medicine with a Seminole tomahawk chop and declared it a "great day for the state of Florida."
It was May 5, the frenzied last day of the two-month state legislative session, and the next-to-the-last bill passed gave Thrasher, the Republican from Orange Park, what he had been pushing for all along: a medical school for FSU.

The state's $50.9-billion budget included $50.8 million for FSU to expand its science programs and launch the first new medical school in the country in 20 years. It is scheduled to open on FSU's campus in the summer of 2001.
That success inspired playful giddiness in FSU President Sandy D'Alemberte. At an FSU Foundation trustees meeting May 19, D'Alemberte presented Thrasher, who has undergraduate and law degrees from Florida State, with a white doctor's coat embroidered "Dr. Thrasher Florida State Uni-versity College of Medicine," a stethoscope and a mock "Doctor of Doctorates" degree.
And Sen. Jim King, R-Jack-sonville, the bill's chief sponsor in the Senate and also an FSU alumnus, couldn't be happier.

"I can't remember ever being as proud of my university, with the exception of the last Sugar Bowl," said King, a Golden Chief with a 1961 FSU master's in business administration.

The turning point in winning favor for the medical school, King said, was convincing naysayers that "it really wasn't our secret intent to build another Shands, or another University of Miami medical school."
FSU plans a community-based medical education, not a large teaching hospital.
"A lot of folks wanted to make this a turf battle," King said. "But this innovative idea could easily serve as a model for every other state."

FSU is making dual promises: train students in an economical way at clinics and doctors' offices, rather than at a big teaching hospital; and focus on supplying primary-care doctors willing to practice in rural communities and willing to treat the state's growing elderly population.

FSU's medical students will learn side-by-side with doctors treating common ailments and injuries in rural areas and in places like Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Orlando, Pensacola and Sarasota. FSU students will get experience in a variety of clinical settings: hospitals, doctors' offices, neighborhood clinics and nursing homes.

Students will be recruited by FSU from the rural communities where they live and will spend most of their third year of medical school in small community hospitals. The hope is that they will return to rural settings once they are licensed doctors.
The new medical school will build on FSU's existing Program in Medical Sciences (PIMS), which enrolled its 30th class in May. Since 1971, PIMS students have done their first year of medical training at FSU and finished at the University of Florida.
"Virtually every medical school that has an extensive hospital and research center is losing money," King said. "... I truly believe that this venture will propel FSU even more into the limelight of cutting-edge ideas, techniques and technology."
The American Medical Association argues that there are enough doctors in the country.

Myra Hurt, PIMS program director and associate professor, has been passionately arguing the other side: "The last medical school in the country was built in 1980. The question I have for you: Is the population the same as it was 20 years ago? Certainly not. In the interim; there has been a need to import physicians from other countries.

"Ninety percent of Florida's doctors come from out of state, and 40 percent were trained in other countries."
According to studies required by the Legislature, 13 Florida counties meet the federal definition of being "underserved" - that is, they have fewer than 33 doctors per 100,000 residents. And that includes Wakulla and Gadsden counties within a dozen miles of FSU.

Forty percent of the state's counties have fewer than 100 doctors per 100,000 people, compared to the national average of 221 per 100,000 population.
Mix in Florida's aging - 3.2 million of 15 million people - who use medical services more, and the need is greater.

A primary-care doctor in the rural Panhandle and one of the earliest backers of the FSU medical school is Rep. Durell Peaden, R-Crestview.

"The fact is many of the citizens of our state - the fourth largest in the nation - are being medically neglected," Peaden said. "Why? Because they are elderly or they live in rural or inner-city areas, and there simply are not enough primary care doctors to treat them."

"We're not going to train dermatologists for West Palm Beach or neurosurgeons for Miami; we need doctors to take care of the poor and elderly folks," Peaden said.

Here's how the $50.8 million breaks down: $15 million to finish the basic sciences building, $6 million to match a donation for a new chemistry building; $12.2 million for more science equipment; $8 million to expand the science program; and $9.6 million to operate the new medical school the first year.

"It's a solid plan that would build on the existing faculty, facilities and curriculum already in place as part of FSU's PIMS program," Peaden said. "The PIMS program has already distinguished itself as the one notable exception to a system of medical education that fails to encourage the training of primary-care doctors. The program has a long history of producing graduates who enter family medicine and stay in Florida, often in areas where there is urgent need for health care."
Thirty students a year currently go through the 12-month PIMS program. In the medical school the number will swell to 120 students per class (480 total).

The FSU medical school has already received its first $1-million gift from E.C. and Tillie Allen of Tallahassee. Two years ago, when the medical school was still in the wrangling stages, the Allens agreed to create an endowment in their names.

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