Charlotte group to unveil medical school feasibility study

Later this month, a group of eight health and business leaders plan to announce the results of a study on the feasibility of establishing a medical school in Charlotte.

Dr. Richard Reiling, a retired Novant Health executive, organized the group, called the Charlotte Medical Education Expansion Committee, more than a year ago. Reiling said an anonymous benefactor made a “sizeable” donation towards paying for the $225,000 contract with Tripp Umbach, a Pittsburgh-based consulting firm that helped develop medical schools in Las Vegas and Scranton, Pa., despite resistance from established schools in those states.

In recent weeks, Tripp Umbach representatives interviewed many of the 60 leaders who have been invited to the Duke Mansion for the May 27 announcement, Reiling said. He declined to share names of committee members or those who have been invited to the event.

Reiling has been pushing for a four-year medical school for years, noting that Charlotte is the largest city in the country without one.

He said his committee’s goal is to create an independent, four-year medical school that could be under the auspices of UNC Charlotte, and maybe in cooperation with Johnson C. Smith University, Davidson College and Queens University of Charlotte. It would use doctors and hospitals from both Carolinas HealthCare System and Novant Health for clinical training, he said.

North Carolina has five medical schools, at UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University, Wake Forest University, East Carolina University and Campbell University. Campbell is the newest, opened in 2013 to train osteopathic doctors who have the same privileges as medical doctors but generally put more emphasis on holistic care and the musculoskeletal system.

Even without a medical school, Charlotte has a long academic medical tradition. Since the 1940s, Carolinas Medical Center has had a residency program that today trains 295 residents and fellows in 35 specialty areas.

In 2010, CMC and UNC collaborated to bring a medical school branch campus to Charlotte. Plans for the satellite were scaled back in 2008 when the legislature failed to approve funding because of revenue shortfalls during the recession.

Today, the UNC School of Medicine Charlotte Campus provides training for 23 third-year students and 17 fourth-year students, said Dr. Mary Hall, associate dean of the Charlotte campus and chief academic officer for Carolinas HealthCare System. Other UNC students spend a few months at CMC for medical rotations.

CMC has 300 faculty doctors, including some who have been teaching medical students and residents for decades, Hall said. Carolinas HealthCare also owns NorthEast hospital in Concord, which has 25 physicians in residency and fellowship programs. Some Novant Health doctors also teach the Charlotte medical students, Hall said.

When she was interviewed by a Tripp Umbach official in recent weeks, Hall said she shared her view there is no need to “create something from scratch … when we already have a high-quality product here.”

“Our suggestion is that we take the nest egg we already have and, if we need to expand, that we expand that,” Hall said. “That’s what makes the most, really the only, sense.”

This story was originally published May 15, 2015 at 4:47 PM with the headline "Charlotte group to unveil medical school feasibility study."