Economy threatens med school plans

State budget crisis puts target start date in peril

By Deborah Schoch
Center for California Health Care Journalism
and Danielle Gaines
Merced Sun-Star

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MERCED -- The road 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.

Victims of the credit crunch and fiscal crisis, these residential shells symbolize the economic currents that have washed over Merced and most of the valley. In their wake, worries have surfaced that the plan for the UC Merced School of Medicine, too, will face its own form of foreclosure as the state budget crisis worsens.

"We don't know the depth of the crisis yet. We don't know when it's going to turn around," said biochemist Maria Pallavicini, dean of the UC Merced School of Natural Sciences and a prominent champion of bringing a medical school here.

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Looming UC budget cuts are raising doubts that a UC Merced School of Medicine, initially set to enroll its first students in 2013, will open within the next decade.

In the best of times, launching a new medical school is a monumental task, requiring the mustering of huge amounts of money and political will. In the worst of times, it can seem nearly impossible.

Still, valley residents cling to the dream. Tran Nguyen is 23 and in her last semester at Merced College. She will be transferring to UC Merced as a biology major in the spring semester. When she finishes her undergraduate degree, she hopes she can be a part of the inaugural medical school class. She thinks a medical school would bring doctors "who really, deeply care."

The drama playing out in Merced in many ways reflects tensions unfolding on public and private campuses nationwide as public funds and endowments dry up. Projects that seemed attainable only a year or so ago now are threatened with delays or even oblivion.

In the case of California campuses, the drama pits research faculty against those favoring primary care medicine; better endowed campuses vs. cash-starved startups; local legislators against those 500 miles away with their own favored education projects.

Back to the drawing board

Some in the UC system and state government are sketching out alternative plans to reduce costs while attempting to improve health care in the valley:

Focusing the Merced medical school more on educating doctors than on expensive research, an approach favored by Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, a UC regent.

Moving medical studies 54 miles to the Fresno campus of UC San Francisco, with its new medical education building.

Expanding the valley-based medical residencies of UC medical schools in San Francisco, Davis and Irvine to attempt to meet rural needs.

Yet many in the valley say they're not ready to be shunted aside again, especially in favor of what they view as long-favored UC campuses in more flush metropolitan areas.

Regional support for a Merced medical school crosses political and economic lines and includes nearly every interest group: business, government, health care advocates, farmworkers and farmers.

Dr. Eric Ramos, chief medical officer for Del Puerto Health Care District in Patterson, said the area only could benefit from a medical school. He likes the public health focus of the proposed school.