Gov. Otter announces private medical school
Gov. Butch Otter announced plans Thursday for a $105 million private medical school on Idaho State University’s Meridian Health Care Campus.
Moments after the State Board of Education approved the public-private partnership the governor held a press conference to announce the project.
“This is an exciting day for the entire state of Idaho,” Otter said, adding he has always been a strong supporter of medical education and joked about the political drubbing he took in 2007 for suggesting Idaho build its own medical school.
Otter said he has asked the Legislature to fund five more medical student slots in the five-state WWAMI medical school housed at the University of Washington, but he said that does not go far enough to solve Idaho’s doctor shortage
especially in the more rural areas in the state.
So when Idaho’s Department of Commerce, State Board of Education and the governor learned that Burrell Group was looking for a place to locate a new privately operated graduate school for osteopathic medicine, they aggressively began to recruit the school.
Construction of the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine is scheduled to begin in February of 2017, and should begin training 150 new doctors per year starting in August of 2018.
Otter said the state has agreed to negotiate a public-private agreement with Burrell, which includes the investors spending $32 million to build the new school on land leased on Idaho State University’s Meridian Health Care Campus.
“The best part is it’s all funded with private investment,” Otter said.
The state will not provide any operating funds to the college either, but the state still has a significant investment in the project with an estimated $3.9 million in tax reimbursements over a 10-year period. The new college is expected to employ 90 people at an average salary of $88,300 per year.
According to the Associated Press, the man behind The Burrell Group, Daniel Burrell, is a real estate investor who owns an industrial garnet mine in New Mexico. Medical schools are a new venture for Burrell, however. His first, the for-profit Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine in Las Cruces, N.M., is expected to accept its first class of students later this year.
Like the college proposed for Idaho, the New Mexico college is next to a public university. Students attending Burrell have access to all the university facilities and services at New Mexico State University and can pay a bit extra to use NMSU's housing and meal services.
That's the same deal spelled out in the plan approved by the Idaho Board of Education on Thursday.
It means that Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine will get to offer students many of the same services they would get out of a larger, more established school, but The Burrell Group won't have to pay for the additional buildings or the associated property taxes, instead relying on the public facilities next door.
Prior to landing in Idaho, Burrell Group tried to open a public-private medical school at the University of Montana, but that effort fell through shortly after the dean of medicine at the University of Washington warned UM that the new private school would compete with its WWAMI program, of which Montana is a part.
Many local physicians were opposed to the school as well, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported in December when the UM pulled out of negotiations with Burrell.
Otter said the Idaho Osteopathic Physicians Association supports the ICOM.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.