It’s a dream seven years in the making: The Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine is officially ready to welcome its inaugural class of medical students.
Starting July 20, 64 students will walk the halls of the five-story, more than $60 million building along Village Drive in Fayetteville as they pursue their four-year medical degrees. They will attend lectures in the building’s classrooms and train in its virtual anatomy and simulation labs.
Seventy faculty and staff hired to run the medical school will help shape the students into the region’s future doctors.
“Years from now, people won’t remember the square footage of the building or the specifics of the technology,” Dr. Hershey Bell, the founding dean of Methodist University’s College of Medicine, said during the school’s ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday.
“But they’ll remember the physician who sat beside them after a devastating diagnosis, the physician who listened, the physician who stayed late, the physician who cared,” he said, “and that’s the purpose of this building, and that’s why today matters.”
Forging the Region’s Future Doctors
Bell has been working with Cape Fear Valley Health and other community members to build the state’s newest medical school since the health system’s former CEO, Michael Nagowski, came to him with the idea in 2019. Bell told CityView that officially opening the medical school is the greatest moment of his over 30-year career.
Over 1,500 students from across the country applied to be part of the medical school’s inaugural class. About half of those offered one of the 64 slots were from North Carolina, Bell said.
Bell said students offered a slot believed in the school’s mission: To deliver high-quality health care to rural and underserved populations in southeastern North Carolina. The school’s evolving curriculum reinforces that commitment. Bell said students will perform community service projects that will shape what is taught in the classroom to ensure the future doctors know how to meet patients’ needs.
“We listen to the students,” Bell said. “We listen to their sense of the community, we listen to our community partners. We revise the curriculum to make sure we’re doing the best for our community.”
Many counties in eastern North Carolina are among the least healthy in the state and face disproportionate rates of diabetes and death by heart disease. Most lack the physicians to improve their residents’ health outcomes; nearly every county east of Interstate 95 is considered a health professional shortage area by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration.
The goal is for students to become the doctors filling the region’s shortages. Thirty-nine percent of North Carolina’s medical school graduates remain in the state as doctors, according to 2015 research from UNC-Chapel Hill’s Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research.
That percentage increases when medical students stay in-state for residency; nearly 65% of physicians who complete both medical school and residency in North Carolina stay in the state to practice, the research showed.
Through its partnership with Cape Fear Valley Health, Bell said Methodist University’s medical students will have access to about 75 residency positions annually across the health system’s over 150 locations in Cumberland and surrounding counties. More could become available as the health system conducts its next physician needs analysis, which helps it determine what specialties the community needs, CEO Daniel Weatherly told CityView.
Over 55% of Cape Fear Valley Health’s residents and fellows have stayed on to practice with the health system since it began offering the programs in 2017, Weatherly said.
“Our goal is not simply to produce knowledgeable physicians,” Bell told the crowd of health care professionals, state lawmakers, and local officials that packed the medical school’s lobby on Thursday. “Our goal is to forge physicians of competence, character, compassion, and courage.”
The medical school is already attracting doctors to Cape Fear Valley Health, Weatherly said. The school turns the health system into an academic institution, he said, drawing doctors who want to conduct research and train the next generation of physicians.
“There’s been a halo effect,” Weatherly said.
More Medical Schools to Fill Shortages
Physician shortages are expected to get worse in North Carolina. The state is predicted to be short more than 7,000 doctors by 2030, according to the nonpartisan public policy organization, The Cicero Institute.
Part of the solution to that shortage, according to Methodist University’s President Stanley Wearden, is more medical schools.
North Carolina has seen a boom in medical schools in recent years, with new ones opening and old ones expanding. The University of North Carolina at Wilmington proposed developing another medical school earlier this year.
“There are really good candidates being turned away from medical school because there just aren’t enough seats, and there aren’t enough medical schools,” Wearden said. “So there are plenty of great students out there for all of us.”
What Wearden said sets Methodist University’s medical school apart is its liberal arts core courses that teach about working collaboratively, ethics, and communication. Most of the students’ first and second years are spent learning in groups of eight, applying what they learn at home through online modules rather than listening to a professor give a lecture.
Impact Beyond Health Care
Cumberland County stands to benefit financially from the new medical school, Nagowski told ribbon-cutting attendees. The school brings over 820 permanent jobs, almost $10 million in annual tax revenue, and over $72 million in annual spending to the county.
It’s why Kirk deViere, chair of the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners, told the crowd he was grateful the board made investments early. The county gave Methodist University $40 million in tax-exempt bonds to construct the school. It also established a $1 million endowment for Cumberland residents pursuing a medical degree and who agree to practice in the county after getting licensed.
“Our children will grow up in a county where becoming a doctor no longer requires leaving home,” deViere said. “That is the legacy that we open today.”
The medical school will host a public open house on July 9 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
