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Miami-Area University Gets State Board's Approval to Start Medical School

Posted on: Friday, 24 March 2006, 18:00 CST

By South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Mar. 24--At a Broward County health clinic, a Haitian patient trusts a traditional remedy that might conflict with needed medication. In a Miami hospital, a critically ill Cuban patient asks for a priest of Santeria, an Afro-Caribbean religion.

As demographics change, so must doctors' training, health-care experts say.

And Florida International University says it's positioned now to lead the way. The Miami-area university got a state board's approval Thursday to start a medical school -- an academic plum that FIU says also means more doctors, cutting-edge health care, jobs and "culturally competent" medicine for South Floridians.

"This school of medicine will impact every member of this community," said FIU President Modesto "Mitch" Maidique.

Thursday's approval was key. But the heaviest lifting could lie ahead, as FIU tries to secure $46.5 million in state money for the school's first five years and $20 million a year afterward. That doesn't include an already approved building or state matches for some of the $78 million in donations promised so far.

Under FIU's plan, the medical school would open in fall 2008 and ultimately enroll 120 students a year. Supporters say it would ease a potential doctor shortage and expand opportunities for innovative treatment.

"[A medical school] really elevates care because you're seeding the community hospitals with research, with faculty, with residents, with medical students," says John E. Matuska, chief executive of Mercy Hospital, an intended training ground for FIU students.

FIU expects its medical school will be unusually diverse for a field in which 60 percent of students nationwide are white. Minorities make up 80 percent of the university's overall student body, and the medical school's tuition will be about 40 percent lower than the current rates at the South Florida's only other M.D. program, the University of Miami. Nova Southeastern University offers osteopathic medical degrees.

And FIU aims to capitalize on diversity to become a living laboratory for "culturally competent" health care.

The term stands for the interplay of heritage and health-care habits, from home remedies to nutrition. It also signals sensitivity to health-care gaps that cut along ethnic and economic lines.

It's an emerging priority for medicine nationwide, but perhaps especially in the superheated melting pot of South Florida.

At the Broward Community & Family Health Center, for instance, medicine and multiculturalism mix regularly.

The Hollywood clinic gets government money to treat uninsured patients. Some haven't seen a doctor in years, relying meanwhile on traditional, home-brewed treatments that may react badly with prescribed medications, says chief executive Rosalyn Frazier.

"We don't just say to them, 'Oh, you can't do that' ... We try to educate them as to why they should not," says Frazier, whose staff gets a cultural-sensitivity refresher each year.

The concept already is enshrined in standards for medical schools, and some medical schools in California and elsewhere have emphasized it. But South Florida's particular cultural mix gives FIU "the potential to be unique," says American Association of Medical Colleges executive M. Brownell Anderson.

The medical school stands to bring research projects and prestige to state-owned FIU, and the university spared no effort campaigning for it. As the university board weighed the plan Thursday, the room was packed with local residents, including more than a dozen FIU students sporting pro-medical-school T-shirts made for the occasion.

The plan met some skepticism nonetheless. The combined cost of FIU's medical school and a similar proposal from the University of Central Florida runs about $500 million over the next 10 years, and some board members said it would be smarter to expand existing medical schools to meet the need for doctors. Others questioned whether the need itself existed.

"The simple question is: Can we spend $400 million or $500 million of taxpayers' money someplace better?" said Dr. Zachariah P. Zachariah, a Fort Lauderdale cardiologist.

But other board members said the central issue was health care, not economics.

"What our citizens are interested in [is]: How are they going to get a doctor as they're aging?" said board chairwoman Carolyn Roberts, an Ocala real-estate broker.

In the end, only one member, Boca Raton land developer John Temple, voted no.

Even with the university board's blessing, FIU still may have more intense lobbying to do in the state Legislature, where the price tag for the two medical schools is raising some eyebrows.

"It's a very expensive proposition, [and] I know how thin our state university system already is in trying to get the resources it needs," said Senate president Tom Lee, R-Brandon.

But FIU doesn't plan to ask for medical-school money until at least next year, when it's likely to have a potent ally in incoming House Speaker Marco Rubio, R-Miami.

By Jennifer Peltz and Josh Hafenbrack. South Florida Sun-Sentinel Linda Kleindienst contributed to this report.

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Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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