Cost of Care Public Health 

Sowing hope: U.C. Merced's quest for a medical school

Partner: 
Merced Sun-Star
Summary: 

What are prospects for bringing a medical school to the University of California’s newest and smallest campus, and to a valley population of 3 million burdened by poverty and lack of access to care? We survey politicians, university officials, representatives of the valley business community, health care workers and farm workers to look at the implications such a school would have on valley health, as well as the impediments the proposal faces.

Impact Summary: 

What are prospects for bringing a medical school to the University of California’s newest and smallest campus, and to a valley population of 3 million burdened by poverty and lack of access to care? We survey politicians, university officials, representatives of the valley business community, health care workers and farm workers to look at the implications such a school would have on valley health, as well as the impediments the proposal faces.

Results
UC Merced hopes to bring a medical school to the Valley
Deborah Schoch and Danielle Gaines | December 3, 2008
The new UC Merced campus in autumn 2008. (Anacleto Rapping/Center for Health Reporting) The medical school would rise like a mirage from the cow pastures and almond groves of Merced County.
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Founding dean driving med school plan
Danielle Gaines,
Merced Sun-Star | December 3, 2008
Maria Pallavicini has the best office on campus. She'll tell you so. As the dean of the school of natural sciences, she flipped a coin against the dean of engineering to determine who got which of the two dean suites in the science and engineering building at the new UC Merced campus. She won, and chose an office with wide views of the entire campus and a front-row seat to every early sunset, Pallavicini remains convinced she made the right choice. Since she moved in to the office, she has racked up another job title: vice provost for health sciences. Translation: it's her job to bring a medical school to UC Merced.
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On the front lines, a call for reinforcements
Deborah Schoch, CHCF Center for Health Reporting | December 3, 2008
One doctor sees local med students practicing here The man from the Congo came to Dr. Silvia Diego's Modesto clinic with seemingly straightforward symptoms: a fever, a cough. But what appeared to be a simple pneumonia did not ease as quickly as it should, and soon the man was on a hospital ventilator, his condition worsening fast. "I knew he needed a specialist. He needed a pulmonologist," said Diego, 43, chief medical officer for Golden Valley Health Centers, a not-for-profit network of 26 clinics in Merced and Stanislaus counties.
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How a UC Merced school of medicine would differ from traditional urban medical schools
Deborah Schoch, CHCF Center for Health Reporting | December 3, 2008
1. Many traditional schools own or operate large urban teaching hospitals where medical students receive clinical training. The UC Merced School of Medicine plans to use existing hospitals and health clinics in the San Joaquin Valley, significantly reducing start-up costs. 2.The traditional medical school model is often geared toward specialization, reflected in its faculty, curriculum and clinical training. Besides educating specialists, UC Merced plans to put more emphasis on primary care and the practice of rural medicine, hoping graduates will remain in the Valley to help meet its health care needs.
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Results
WWAMI: A rural medicine success story
Deborah Schoch, CHCF Center for Health Reporting | December 3, 2008
The WWAMI consortium, started in 1971, has grown into a nationally acclaimed rural medicine program named after its five member states: Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho. Based at the University of Washington in Seattle, it emphasizes primary care and decentralized training similar to the approach favored by UC Merced. More than 60 percent of its graduates have stayed to practice within the five states. Dr. Dan Hunt, who headed the consortium for 17 years, is now senior director of accreditation services at the Association of American Medical Colleges in Washington, D.C., which accredits all U.S. medical schools. A longtime advocate of training more rural doctors, he cautions that launching such programs can face an uphill battle.
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Results
A bountiful need for care
Danielle Gaines and Deborah Schoch | December 5, 2008
It's a typical Thursday afternoon at Mercy Family Medical Clinic in Merced. The waiting room is full. Regular patients mingle with the 30 or so people who have waited weeks to get into a special weekly dermatology clinic. They've got only a four-hour window to be seen by a skin specialist, Dr. Albert Col. The doctor and two residents must diagnose eight patients an hour. Patient ailments range from eczema to skin cancer. Col runs a private practice in Merced, but spends most of his time treating patients at similar specialty clinics in Atwater, Mariposa and other rural sites.
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Results
Homegrown doctors are not even possible now
Danielle Gaines, Merced Sun-Star | December 5, 2008
Humberto Barragan is an almost perfect candidate for UC Merced's proposed medical school. An interest in public-service health care? Check. A dedication to practice in the Valley? Check. Hard work and good grades? Check. Reflective of the face of California? Check. But Barragan, 37, has already finished osteopathic medical school. He's a second-year resident at Mercy Family Medical Clinic and Mercy Medical Center in Merced. "I wish it had been here when I graduated," Barragan said of the prospective UC Merced program. Nevertheless, he looks forward to helping future residents from the school once it opens.
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Results
Medi-Cal reimburses doctors for treating the poor
Danielle Gaines, Merced Sun-Star | December 5, 2008
What is Medi-Cal? California's version of the federal Medicaid program that provides public health care aid for the state's low-income, blind and disabled. Who is eligible? Residents on many state programs are eligible for Medi-Cal as well as Californians who are 65 or older, blind, disabled, under 21 years of age, pregnant or have certain other circumstances. Why do some Medi-Cal patients have problems getting treatment? There are a number of reasons Medi-Cal patients may have difficulty scheduling a doctor's appointment, but the main one is money.
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Results
Med school faces long odds
Deborah Schoch and Danielle Gaines | December 6, 2008
The road to campus is flanked by half-built suburban homes that would seem ideal for a faculty family or a young doctor putting down roots in Merced. Just a minute up the road is the youngest campus of the University of California -- and the future headquarters of a potential medical school that could radically improve health care throughout the San Joaquin Valley. But construction has stopped. Instead of young professional families lounging on their lawns, wood-framed skeletons and weedy vacant lots scar the landscape. Orange mercury-vapor lights cast shadows on empty dream homes.
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Results
January a pivotal month for medical school's prognosis
Deborah Schoch, CHCF Center for Health Reporting | December 6, 2008
A report due in January from three nationally known medical consultants will help determine if a medical school will be developed anytime soon at the Merced campus of the University of California. One of those leaders is Charles E. Young, who spent 29 years as chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles, home of the UC system's largest medical school. All three have led or worked at large urban medical schools or teaching hospitals, and two are graduates of Harvard Medical School. The recommendations from the Washington Advisory Group, a consulting firm, will guide the next steps in planning the San Joaquin Valley's first medical school, UC officials said Friday.
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Merced College student wants to be first at medical school
Deborah Schoch, CHCF Center for Health Reporting | December 6, 2008
Martin Lopez Diaz knows the scene well. A pickup rolls up to a rural house as the afternoon wanes, and out leap five, 10, a dozen men who immediately break into a run. Fresh from the farm fields where they've worked all day, they want to be first in the shower, first at the stove to cook what is often a starchy dinner fried in lard and washed down with sugary energy drinks. That's the sort of food regimen that helps drive the San Joaquin Valley's high obesity and diabetes rates.
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UC medical schools
Merced Sun-Star | December 6, 2008
UC Merced School of Medicine would be seventh in a series. 1. UC San Francisco School of Medicine: UC San Francisco founded 1864, became UC campus 1964 Total enrollment: 2,932 students School of Medicine founded 186, affiliated with UC 1873 Enrollment: 594 M.D. students 2. UCLA School of Medicine: UCLA opened in 1919 Total enrollment: 39,626 students School of Medicine opened 1951 Enrollment: 750 M.D. students 3. UC Davis School of Medicine:
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Results
Impact of "Sowing Hope"
Staff | October 25, 2010
“Sowing Hope,” the first project launched by the Center’s pilot project, ran Dec.  3, 5 and 6, 2008, in the Merced Sun-Star, a McClatchy daily newspaper in the San Joaquin Valley.  It chronicled the case for a proposed new medical school at UC Merced.  The 12-story series probed the chronic shortage of doctors in the Valley, which has the least access to physician care per capita of any area in the state.  It explored ways that a medical school could be developed quickly and inexpensively.  That “fast-track” approach would be championed by then-Lt. Gov.
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