By Dave Anderson:
The Tribune Review had a story on a local hospital chain's initial investigation concerning the opening of a new medical school in Pittsburgh. The hospital thinks that there will be a market for its services, and that there is a sufficient depth of training opportunities in the region as the regional economic cluster matrix is heavily "eds and meds." There was one note at the end of the article that drew my eye. Commonwealth Medical College is a new medical school in Scranton, PA, and it is a low prestige, lowly ranked school at this time:
If Commonwealth's experience holds, West Penn Allegheny won't have trouble in attracting students.
"Last fall, we had 4,500 applications for 100 slots in our second class," D'Alessandri said. "We could increase class size beyond what we're doing, and we could easily fill our classes with qualified students."
A low prestige, low tier school has a funnel that excludes 97% of applicants. Yes, a significant proportion of those applicants were likely using Commonwealth as a safety school, however the director admits that there are plenty of fully qualified students out there that were not admitted to Commonwealth or any other medical schools.
The funnel is too narrow. Some of those fully qualified potential docs who were not accepted at Commonwealth will either apply and be accepted in the future, or go into medium education diversion professions such as the masters clinician level as a physician's assistant or nurse practicitioner. However the restriction on doctor supply by the intentional shortage of medical schools slots for fully qualified individuals means Americans pay way more for each unit of care than elsewhere.
Time to widen the funnel.
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