Local & State Headlines

Expert: Expand medical college

• An expanded medical college campus at an Albany hospital could enhance the city's ability to attract physicians.

Dave Williams

ATLANTA — Albany would play a part in an expansion of the Medical College of Georgia proposed Tuesday to the state University System Board of Regents.

A consultant is calling for the state to expand MCG’s Southwest Georgia Clinical Campus in Albany and build a second regional campus in Savannah as part of an effort to head off a projected shortage of more than 2,500 doctors by 2020.

“There is a drought of physicians in Georgia,” Paul Umbach, president of Pittsburgh-based Tripp Umbach, told board members. “It will be a crisis in 2020 unless there is immediate coordinated action.”

Georgia has been plagued by shortages of both doctors and nurses for years. In each case, an aging work force is not being replenished quickly enough by newly trained medical professionals.

The consultant’s plan would address that problem by expanding MCG’s statewide enrollment from the current 745 students to 1,200 by 2020.

The expansion would include growing the main campus in Augusta to 900 students. Another important element of the proposal is the planned opening of a new campus in Athens in partnership with the University of Georgia at the former Navy Supply Corps School, abandoned by the government during the latest round of base closings. It would have an enrollment of 240 students.

The clinical campus in Albany, located at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, and the new site in Savannah would accommodate 30 third- and fourth-year students each.

Doug Patten, senior vice president for medical affairs at Phoebe Putney, said the clinical campus MCG opened there in 2005 has been limited to students rotating through on an intermittent basis.

“The fully developed plan will have a cohort of students who will relocate from the main campus in Augusta to Albany,” he said.

Georgia’s doctor shortage is particularly severe in under-served areas of the state.

Patten said regional campuses should help address that problem by spreading out physician training.

“The tendency is to practice where you train,” he said.

The consultant’s recommendations would require a major financial investment. The plan calls for the state to kick in $10 million this year to develop facilities and hire faculty and administrators.

After that, state support for medical education would increase from the current $65 million a year to $116 million in 2020.

The plan also calls for a $210 million long-range capital projects program, including $2.4 million for a 6,000-square-foot medical education building in Albany.

Umbach said the state would get its money back and then some.

According to the report, making all of the improvements the consultant recommends would double the annual economic impact of public medical education in Georgia to $3.2 billion a year. It would create about 11,000 jobs and increase annual tax revenue from $144 million to $296 million.

“The fruits of this will more than pay for itself,” Umbach said.

The Board of Regents will consider formally adopting the consultant’s report at an upcoming meeting.

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