The University of Houston board approves medical school

Definitely, but I wouldn’t be surprised if A&M tries to get in this too. They’ve really been trying to expand their medical school’s presence in Houston.

Talked to a friend who’s an official with Harris Health who confirmed that they’re hoping to include UH Med School in the new contract. Said HH has been trying for “years” to revise contract written years ago with no success (i.e.UT and BU have not been “cooperative.”) so they had no choice but end it. He talked about how much the new school at UH is needed. Thinks it’ll be a snap through the leg.

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Oldtime,

Gosh, if only we could keep those flippin’ Aggies out of Houston and confined to the Brazos Valley!

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Good news

Higher ed commissioner says it shouldn’t affect UH’s med school bid, up for consideration in October

Didn’t they want UH to create new residency spots in order to be considered for a new med school? Did Sam Houston have to do the same?

As a UH grad, I’m excited for UH getting a new med school, but all of these medical schools popping up in Texas is becoming a bit concerning.

With the shortage of physicians in Texas, why would you be concerned?

Because the bottleneck of physician training is in residencies, not medical schools. There are a lot of medical schools popping up around the country (especially osteopathic schools), while residency spots remain stagnant. This increases the chances of people graduating medical school without matching into a residency, which puts them in six digit debt without a job as a practicing physician to pay it back. The matching process is incredibly stressful, and this only makes it worse.

Second, while there are shortages, the shortages are highly geographic and specialty dependent. People tend to want to practice in urban settings and become specialists. The job market in many cities (Houston included) is pretty saturated when it comes to specialists. Rural areas and primary care are where the main shortages are, and simply building more schools isn’t an efficient way of addressing that. UH’s school puts a heavy emphasis on addressing these issues, which is why I’m a big fan of it.

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