ASU to build own medical school

Arizona State University will build its own medical school to produce more health-care workers and expand access to health care, ASU President Michael Crow announced Thursday.

The University of Arizona is now the only state university in Arizona with an accredited medical school, with campuses in Tucson and Phoenix.

Other medical schools in the state include Creighton University School of Medicine in Phoenix, which is affiliated with Creighton University in Nebraska; Midwestern University, a private school with a campus in Glendale; Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine in Phoenix, which is affiliated with the Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic.

Crow’s announcement of the project, called ASU Health, comes in response to the Arizona Board of Regents' recent directive to each of Arizona’s three state universities to come up with plans to help ease the state's health-care gaps.

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An estimated 3 million Arizonans have limited access to a primary care provider, which often results in worse health outcomes for patients, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. More than one in three Arizona hospitals faces critical shortages.

A couple of months ago, the UA laid out its plan for producing and retaining more health-care workers in the state. That plan includes the UA and Banner Health forging the UA College of Medicine and Banner University Medical Center-Tucson into a fully integrated academic medical center. According to a news release from the regents, it “will bring together some of the brightest minds in research, while increasing the medical school’s capacity and number of graduates.”

ASU’s plans for a medical school are still in the early conceptual stages. In addition to building a medical school, the new entity ASU Health will “pioneer advances in health care while growing ASU’s partnership with the Mayo Clinic; expand the nursing workforce; bridge engineering and medicine to advance problem solving and address complex health care problems,” according to a news release.