Medical school could bring clinical trials to Idaho

Idaho may be getting a good bang for its buck with WWAMI, the Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho medical school partnership, in terms of the number of doctors that stay in Idaho. But there’s more to a medical program than just the doctors that come out of it, Idaho State University President Arthur Vailas told members of the media this morning.

University of Idaho President Tim White told the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee earlier this week that the WWAMI gives Idaho a 70 percent return on investment in terms of the number of medical students it sends to the program that end up practicing in Idaho, according to reports in the Spokane Spokesman-Review. That compares to 40 percent for the average in-state medical school, he said, suggesting purchasing more seats in WWAMI would be a better deal than starting a medical school.

“We don’t want people to focus just on seats,” Vailas said. “We want them to focus on the entire impact of graduate and undergraduate medicine – the research, the synergies with other health care professionals, the relationships with practicing hospitals and insurance and federal dollars … overcoming the rural challenges of health care delivery and bringing in the latest technology.

“It’s not about doctors, it’s about all of the health care professions, insurance, finance. It’s about nurses, P.T.s, technicians.”

One benefit that could come from having a medical school is the ability to host clinical trials in Idaho. If you qualify to participate in a clinical trail, it doesn’t matter if you have insurance, he said – you could receive a breakthrough treatment for diabetes or heart disease paid for by the federal government or a pharmaceutical company. “We have a lot of uninsured people here,” Vailas said.

Vailas challenged JFAC members to look at the economic benefits of a medical school earlier this week.