Southern Utah Med School Expansion

A new Southern Utah Regional Medical Campus will address a stark reality facing the state. Utah ranks last among all states for its proportion of primary care physicians, with just 60.2 per 100,000 residents. Even worse, only 11 percent of those doctors work in rural areas.

“We’ve got to really start thinking about collaboration,” President Taylor Randall HBA’90 said during recent meetings with Utah Tech University leaders. “The challenge that lies before us is to enhance our partnership and combine our strengths in new ways that serve the citizens of the state.”

The Utah Legislature jumpstarted the ambitious effort with $5.5 million in annual funding for the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine to expand its student body. The program could begin with 10 rural-focused students as early as 2026, with the Southern Utah clinical training program beginning in 2029 and potential future expansion to include medical residents.

Rather than following traditional medical school structures that push specialization, the program will tap into rural students’ desire to serve their home communities. Statistics support this approach. While only 40 percent of medical students typically stay where they complete schooling, that number jumps to 70 percent for those who complete both medical school and residency in the same community.

Students in the inaugural class will spend their first year studying in Salt Lake City, then complete their second and third years of medical school in Southern Utah beginning in 2029, with residency opportunities potentially following.

University leaders are building partnerships with Utah Tech for educational spaces and health care providers for clinical training programs.

“Primary care keeps us healthy and out of hospitals,” says Michelle Hofmann HBS’94 MPH’97, interim senior associate dean of the Southern Utah Regional Medical Campus. “We’re committed to being part of solving that problem.”