UT Regents Announcement re: Establishing UT Medical School (Houston, Dallas: hotels, schools)

[OpenD]

What do you think of this late breaking big news from the UT Regents?

UT regents commit, with conditions, to establishing medical school in Austin

[scm53]

My wife is a hospital CEO - fellow of the American College of Health Care Executives. She says the shortage isn't in med school slots, it is in residency slots. The idea that med schools provide low cost care givers in interns and residents is an old idea - salaries discounted for errors due to inexperience makes them almost as expensive today as a full fledged doc.

This is a feel good move, spending our tax dollars - another version of a municipal baseball park that no REAL city can be without. (one of Austin's finest moment was when they told the Giants no thanks to the "offer" of the privilege of building them a stadium for their AAA team leaving Phoenix). If we have a primary care provider shortage, the solution is in adding more PA and NP slots in the existing schools, and subsidize primary care residencies. Another myth, behind the new parallel South Texas UT med schol is that caregivers practice where they went to school. NO evidence of that. If a doc, trained in South Texas, has a offer in Austin, or Harlingen, guess where they will practice? The old days of graduate, pick a city and "hang out a shingle" are gone. Today, the employed model is the norm - and preferred by recent graduates. You practice where you 1) get an offer, and 2) want to live. Not over nostalgia for where your schooling was.

Your tax dollars at work - feeding politicians' egos.

[Willsson]

Originally Posted by scm53

Spoiler

My wife is a hospital CEO - fellow of the American College of Health Care Executives. She says the shortage isn't in med school slots, it is in residency slots. The idea that med schools provide low cost care givers in interns and residents is an old idea - salaries discounted for errors due to inexperience makes them almost as expensive today as a full fledged doc.

This is a feel good move, spending our tax dollars - another version of a municipal baseball park that no REAL city can be without. (one of Austin's finest moment was when they told the Giants no thanks to the "offer" of the privilege of building them a stadium for their AAA team leaving Phoenix). If we have a primary care provider shortage, the solution is in adding more PA and NP slots in the existing schools, and subsidize primary care residencies. Another myth, behind the new parallel South Texas UT med schol is that caregivers practice where they went to school. NO evidence of that. If a doc, trained in South Texas, has a offer in Austin, or Harlingen, guess where they will practice? The old days of graduate, pick a city and "hang out a shingle" are gone. Today, the employed model is the norm - and preferred by recent graduates. You practice where you 1) get an offer, and 2) want to live. Not over nostalgia for where your schooling was.

Your tax dollars at work - feeding politicians' egos.

Not entirely....

The Board of Regents pledged $30 million a year from the Permanent University Fund, a multibillion-dollar higher education endowment.

[atxcio]

It's not so much the med school slots -- those will be filled with students that will move away (for the most part) anyway.

The way I see it, it's more about the teaching/research hospital. That's where the benefit to the community is... we don't have an advanced medical center like Houston, Dallas or SA. With the population skyrocketing, there should be a place like that now. And the medical school is a part of that. The kind of high-end medical research (and research doctors) that a UT system school can bring will be a huge asset.

And our tax dollars aren't really paying much for it. It's from UT's endowment (and the UT schools have been reducing their take from tax money, not increasing it) and Seton. Travis county is planning to pay some money in exchange for a new medical examiner's office, but that's money they would have spent anyway.

There are really a lot of exciting projects going on that will permanently push Austin to the next level, and this is one. F1, Apple's Operations Center, a couple of huge hotels being built downtown, UT Medical School, etc. I've got mixed feelings about the changes that will inevitably come, but I'm also glad to have experienced the city in some of it's different phases.

[scm53]

Originally Posted by tofurkey

Not entirely....

Did you see the part about Central Health planning a November election to raise the tax rate to pay for this? That is in perpetuity - the PUF raid ends.

And as far as Seton's part, that is capital cost for the replacement of Brack. They will get the money back out by the charges for running Brack. They aren't "contributing" a dime.

[atxcio]

Originally Posted by scm53

And as far as Seton's part, that is capital cost for the replacement of Brack. They will get the money back out by the charges for running Brack. They aren't "contributing" a dime.

So you have a private company paying to build a medical school, and they get to recoup their costs from operation. = Not your tax money building the school.

Isn't this exactly what you want?

[scm53]

Originally Posted by atxcio

So you have a private company paying to build a medical school, and they get to recoup their costs from operation. = Not your tax money building the school.

Isn't this exactly what you want?

And who is the only revenue source for Brack? Wash it any way you want to, it is tax money - not a "contribution". If it ISN'T tax money, then why does Central Health foresee a need to increase the tax rate to serve the same size population without a medical school?

[1mintjulep]

Does this mean that Austin will be getting a hospital that isn't run by the Catholic church?

[atxcio]

Originally Posted by scm53

And who is the only revenue source for Brack? Wash it any way you want to, it is tax money - not a "contribution". If it ISN'T tax money, then why does Central Health foresee a need to increase the tax rate to serve the same size population without a medical school?

Huh? Are you under the impression Seton's only revenue source is tax money? Even if you are only looking at Brack, that's just not true.

It seems like you are trying to argue in one sentence against the very thing you are advocating in another.

This is a public/private partnership -- with the hospital/school building costs being covered by a private company, the cost to run the school from the UT system endowment (and that's where their money is SUPPOSED to be spent, on education), as well as some amount of taxpayer money.

As far as Central Health taxing more, a quick lookup shows that they increased the rate by 6.5% -- from 7.27 cents on $100 to 7.89. Their TOTAL revenue off that property tax is about $67M, so a 6.5% increase would hardly pay for any teaching hospital.

Central Health - 9/15 - Board approves fiscal year 2012 Budget (you can actually look at their budget if you want to see where the money goes)

And to say they are serving the "same size population" is also false. The population within central health is booming, you can check the stats on that, they are serving a whole lot more people each year.

[tstwahine]

I wonder if they will also do a Physician Assistants Program too...