The future of WSU’s medical program will be decided by July.

Following the University of Washington’s announcement in March that UW would expand its school of medicine to the Spokane region, WSU announced Friday it had begun a feasibility assessment to investigate the potential of opening a medical school at the WSU Spokane campus. 

With completion scheduled for July of this year, the assessment will provide a breakdown of costs for a potential medical school located on the WSU Spokane campus, the required local and regional resources, and a potential timeline, said Terren Roloff, director of communications and public affairs for WSU Spokane.

“The timing is right to have a statewide dialogue about the best structure for meeting medical education needs in the future,” WSU Spokane Chancellor Lisa Brown said in a press release.

The assessment is being carried out by MGT of America, a national advising firm that worked on Florida State University’s medical program.

George Novan, associate director of medical science on the Spokane campus, said the choice to look into a medical school in Spokane rather than Pullman was a matter of numbers.

The size of Spokane’s population will offer medical students the potential for more residencies and internships, along with the ability to branch out into rural areas once students are trained, Nolan said. Students will also be encouraged to work in the rural areas of eastern Washington currently in dire need of trained physicians.

Fifteen of Washington’s 39 counties average a ratio of fewer than 10 physicians per every 10,000 residents, compared to the national average of 26 per 10,000, according to medicine.wsu.edu

These residents often live in rural areas where clinics and hospitals struggle to attract doctors, according to the same site.

“We hope to develop a model that can train students in a big city but also move some out for a real long-term experience in a rural area and come up with a new paradigm for teaching that will be beneficial for the eastern part of the state,” Novan said.

WSU Spokane currently houses the WSU nursing, pharmacy and sleep and performance programs. Novan said these will aid the potential medical school through student interaction and the presence of the recently-opened $80 million Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Sciences Building, which was dedicated in December 2013.

The assessment will not just focus on the financial burden of a new medical school. It will also look at the effect this school could have on the Spokane community and outlying rural areas.

“They’re going to look at, what are the community resources and the regional resources, what are the needs for not just citizens who will one day be patients but citizens who could one day be students, and all that gets rolled into what it will cost,” Novan said.

WSU President Elson S. Floyd and the Board of Regents will use the results of the feasibility study to determine what steps WSU will need to take to make the project happen, said Executive Director of University Communications Kathy Barnard.

“We can’t go charging into the dark on something like this,” Barnard said.

WSU is already a member of the WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Idaho) medical education program. The WWAMI is a collaborative program accredited through the University of Washington’s school of medicine that allows for first-year and second-year medical education at WSU facilities.