Staff Writer
ATLANTA --- Medical College of Georgia will be expanded to "maximum capacity" in Augusta, but the school will have to look at regional campuses in Athens, Albany and Savannah if it is to reach the minimum 1,200 students needed by 2020 to stave off a historic "drought" of physicians, a consultant said Tuesday.
Paul Umbach, the founder of the economic and health care consulting firm Tripp Umbach, gave a long-awaited presentation on expanding medical education in Georgia to the University System of Georgia Board of Regents.
Chancellor Erroll B. Davis said he did not know of a timeline for the panel to take up the plan.
After a three-month study, Mr. Umbach concluded that the state is not only understaffed but is also facing a 1,500-physician shortage in underserved areas and a 2,500-doctor shortage overall by 2020.
"There's a drought of physicians in Georgia, and it will become a crisis in 2020" without immediate action, he said.
With the state's population expected to swell by 3 million, Georgia would likely be last in the country in the number of physicians per person, Mr. Umbach said.
"But fortunately, we are not that state, we are not yet that state," Mr. Davis said. "Today we have a plan and a road map to ensure we do not become that state."
Mr. Umbach said under the plan:
- MCG would expand in Augusta from 190 students per class to 240 by 2017, with a new $99 million medical education building in conjunction with a new facility for the School of Dentistry that would save about $20 million in efficiencies.
- MCG, in partnership with the University of Georgia, would start in Athens with a 40-student class in 2009 or 2010, then expand to 60 per class or 240 total when the Navy Supply Corps School closes in 2011 and the school moves there.
- Regional clinical campuses in Albany and Savannah would get about 30 students each for their third- and fourth-year clerkships.
- The 900 or so students in Augusta would require clinical teaching help from all of the Augusta hospitals, and that number is the limit of what can be done locally and more than is being done anywhere in the country.
"There would be no other place in America that would have so many medical students per capita," Mr. Umbach said. "So we're really looking to expand to the maximum capacity in Augusta, but it will require that partnership."
While some Augusta legislators complained that the report merely rubber-stamped plans MCG and UGA had been working on for two years, Mr. Umbach said he didn't look at them.
"We started actually by looking at the current program, how it needed to be strengthened and how big it could possibly get," he said. "And I think our numbers are bigger than anybody's numbers that ever looked at this."
It is only through collaboration with others in the state that it can be done, MCG President Daniel W. Rahn said.
"MCG cannot do this without the support and partnership of others that are equally invested in the health and well-being of Georgians," he said. "And that's why the solution recommended is a statewide solution."
The report asks for $10 million in funding this year to begin renovating a site in Athens and hiring crucial personnel for that campus, including a dean and key faculty. The plan would raise the annual operating support for medical education to $116 million by 2020 and call for $210 million in capital projects.
But Tripp Umbach estimated the complete MCG expansion will generate nearly $300 million in additional tax revenue and, taken as a whole, create an additional $1.6 billion economic impact. Mr. Davis said the university system would work hard to make the point to the Legislature that it will be an investment.
"We will make the absolute best case possible and try and suggest that this is a battle that we cannot afford to lose," he said. "It is one that is critical to the health and welfare of our citizens as well as to the economy of this state. My assumption is it will be given a very high priority by the Legislature."
Reach Tom Corwin at (706) 823-3213 or tom.corwin@augustachronicle.com.
