Hopeful students can soon apply to the Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine, North Carolina’s fifth and newest medical school.
After six years of planning, the Fayetteville school on Thursday received preliminary accreditation from the Liaison Commission on Medical Education, the accrediting body for American and Canadian medical schools. The accreditation allows Methodist University to begin recruiting and accepting applicants for its inaugural class of 64 students who will start in July.
“It’s an achievement for every physician on the medical staff, for every professor at Methodist University, for every member of the administrative teams of our organizations,” said Dr. Hershey Bell, the founding dean of the medical school. “What we demonstrated is that we have what it takes to train the next generation of physicians on equal par with every other medical school in this country, and that’s astounding. It shows what the ‘Can Do’ city can do.”
Preliminary accreditation is the first step in the full accreditation process. The commission will conduct another site review before the first class is halfway through its second year to determine whether the school can receive provisional accreditation status. Another site visit in the first class’s fourth year will determine whether the school is granted full accreditation.
In the next 10 days to two weeks, prospective students can apply through the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS), the centralized medical school application processing portal, Bell said.
While it is late in the medical school recruiting process, Bell expects the school to receive between 2,000 and 2,500 applications. About 350 will be interviewed to determine which will be selected for the school’s first class, he said.
Both Bell and Michael Nagowski, CEO of Cape Fear Valley Health, hope the medical school will be the start of a pipeline that leads to more health care access in southeastern North Carolina. Sixty-seven percent of medical school graduates who complete medical school and residency in North Carolina remain in the state to practice, according to research from the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC-Chapel Hill.
The graduates will have access to the 350 residencies and fellowships with Cape Fear Valley Health. About 60 percent of the health system’s residents and fellows stay after the end of their programs, according to Nagowski.
“If you came here at one o’clock on one of our floors, you would see us do what we call multi-disciplinary rounds,” Nagowski said. “We talk about every single patient, the plan of care, and what’s going to go forward. Following the attending are fellows, residents, and students, so they’re immediately baked into the culture. So when they’re applying [to residency or fellowships], we already know them and they know us. It becomes a natural transition.”
Physicians are already coming to Cape Fear Valley Health because they want to teach at the medical school, Nagowski said. They include Dr. Kristen McGinness, a podiatric specialist and the health system’s podiatric residency director, and Dr. Ryan Huttinger, a cardiothoracic surgeon and former general surgery resident with the health system.
Southeastern North Carolina needs the influx of physicians. Nearly every county in the southeastern corner of the state has a shortage of primary care and mental health providers, according to the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, a federal agency under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Three of the nine counties Cape Fear Valley Health covers—Bladen, Sampson, and Columbus—are either a maternity care desert or have low access to maternity care, according to the March of Dimes’s most recent report card.
“Health care is going to change,” Bell said. “Folks in this community will get access to the highest quality health care. We will see results in everybody who lives in this region.”
Cumberland County’s economy should also be positively impacted. The medical school is expected to increase the area’s annual spending by $72 million, according to an economic impact study cited in Methodist University’s press release about the accreditation. The school will also create nearly 850 new jobs, the study found.
Over 50 people have been hired for the medical school, Bell said. He said another 20 will be hired before July, and a total of 100 people will work for the medical school in the next two years.
Community members have rallied around the university’s medical school, which has received over $23 million in donations. The Cumberland Community Foundation gave the medical school a $1 million grant last month. The Duke Endowment gave $1.5 million to the school in August. The Cumberland County Board of Commissioners funded a $1 million scholarship endowment for county residents attending the school.
“It shows how much this community believes in itself, and how much this community sees the value of this,” said Stanley Wearden, president of Methodist University. “This is a doctor desert, and this [school] will transform that. This will transform the quality of care. It will transform health care outcomes in this region. It will transform the wealth of the region.”
CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville.