New Mayo Clinic Med School in AZ

[Dr. Doogie]

Hey everyone - there is a new Mayo Clinic Medical School opening up in AZ. The Admissions rep will be discussing admissions and academic possibilities for future physicians. My friend and I will be asking tons of questions and listening intently. If you have any questions for him post them here and I will send back his replies!

Thanks! Hope to learn a lot today!

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[Chromium Surfer]

Hi! Thanks for doing this.

Can you ask him if there will any instate preference for students from Arizona who apply during the summer of next year, and overall in general. Also can you ask if doing any year long and week long programs with Mayo both here and in Rochester makes a difference?

Thank you!

 

[flapjack3d]

Are there separate applications for the two schools?

 

[NoRagrets]

where will the students be rotating for the most part?

 

[Dr. Doogie]

Thanks for your questions, guys!

He made the distinction known that we shouldn't refer to it as a new medical school, rather just a new campus of the Mayo medical school in Rochester. With that said, he emphasized that the curriculum, standards, goals and admissions requirements will be the same as the existing Rochester campus.

To answer your specific questions: @chromiumsurfer: there will be no in state preference for AZ residents, nor seats held for any. He said more out of state students apply but that it's more of a selection bias thing than anything. The inaugural class represented a 6.4% application to interview rate for AZ students whereas it was 7% for out of state, not a big difference. Also, he said that if you took part in the Mayo clinic SURF program and you can speak passionately about it in an interview and get a glowing LOR from a supervisor you worked with, it will naturally have more weight since the admissions committee will most likely know that person and also they understand the rigor of those programs and what it takes to get in.

@flapjack3d: there are 3 options to apply - AZ only, Minnesota only, or both. There are separate admissions committees for each school and neither school is aware of the others progression during selection

@NoRagrets students in AZ will rotate at AZ PHX Children's Hospital, Mountain Park Health and Maricopa Medical Center. Students will also have the opportunity to rotate at any of the partner hospitals in MN and FL. There are also "selectives" 1-2 week breaks during the 1st and 2nd years where students can gain additional clinical experience at centers of their choice or vacation, volunteer, research, work with internal departments at Mayo i.e. Legal department, and other things to break up your time. They're not official rotations though, obviously.

All in all the Mayo AZ campus looks amazing and the Shea buildings will be open 8/1 for tours.

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[Dr. Doogie]

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[NeuResurgens]

Will franchising be a new trend in medical education?

 

[Dr. Doogie]

As long as there is money to be made and a shortage of doctors, yeah. I don't think that's anything necessarily new though. Normal universities have had sister campuses and satellite campuses forever. It only makes sense that medical schools would as well.


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[Jsor20]

Dr. Doogie. You are a true hero of SDN. thank you for this


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[dental15triodino]

So would applicants apply to this med school separately or to the original Mayo Clinic and later request this location?

 

[NeuResurgens]

So would applicants apply to this med school separately or to the original Mayo Clinic and later request this location?

Sounds like the latter based on OP's reports.

 

[Dr. Doogie]

Sorry if my explanation was confusing. More accurately: the Mayo Clinic AZ Campus is a separate entity but based on the same formula/curriculum as the Rochester school. Think of it like U of A Phx Downtown and the original Tucson campus.

And you can either apply to both with one single application (and then proceed with two separate sets of interviews) or only apply to one or the other.


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[username456789]

As long as there is money to be made and a shortage of doctors, yeah. I don't think that's anything necessarily new though. Normal universities have had sister campuses and satellite campuses forever. It only makes sense that medical schools would as well.


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There is no shortage of doctors, and this sort of thing is going to end up hurting doctors in the end. We are going the way of lawyers, unfortunately.

 

[username456789]

Oh hamburgers.

 

[Brahnold Bloodaxe]

As long as there is money to be made and a shortage of doctors, yeah. I don't think that's anything necessarily new though. Normal universities have had sister campuses and satellite campuses forever. It only makes sense that medical schools would as well.


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Normal degrees haven't been worth the paper they're printed on since forever, too. Glad to see the AAMC is working hard to ensure medical degrees join them as soon as possible.

On a related note, "the doctor shortage" construct didn't just appear out of thin air. A "shortage" of a profession isn't like a mountain or the air temperature, it's not something you go out and tangibly notice. Is there a plumber shortage? How the hell would you know, in fact how would you define such a thing? The Doctor Shortage (TM) is an agenda created and pushed by....the AAMC. Hmm, now why would that be. Oh wait, what is the AAMC selling? That's right, it's selling medical education!

It's simple, really. The AAMC pushed the doctor shortage schtick for two reasons. One, to entice people to buy its product, which is spots in medical school. But primarily, and this is the real, silent killer, to push for residency spot expansion. See, the AAMC wants unlimited room for increasing medical school spots, aka its revenue. But eventually, this expansion is going to bump against the number of residency spots, which while growing, are not growing anywhere near as fast as medical school seats. So the AAMC is lobbying hard for much more rapid expansion of residencies so that this limit to its own growth is removed. And what is it using as its primary tool in this lobbying effort? The specter of a calamitous "physician shortage" that is going to strike us down any day now unless we give the AAMC the extra residency spots that it craves, of course.

Sure, all that is going to do is flood the country with doctors and make our job market as effed as law, pharmacy, etc, but that's none of the AAMC's problem. They'll already have cashed the tuition checks by then.

 

[username456789]

Normal degrees haven't been worth the money they're printed on since forever, too. Glad to see the AAMC is working hard to ensure medical degrees join them as soon as possible.

On a related note, "the doctor shortage" construct didn't just appear out of thin air. A "shortage" of a profession isn't like a mountain or the air temperature, it's not something you go out and tangibly notice. Is there a plumber shortage? How the hell would you know, in fact how would you define such a thing? The Doctor Shortage (TM) is an agenda created and pushed by....the AAMC. Hmm, now why would that be. Oh wait, what is the AAMC selling? That's right, it's selling medical education!

It's simple, really. The AAMC pushed the doctor shortage schtick for two reasons. One, to entice people to buy its product, which is spots in medical school. But primarily, and this is the real, silent killer, to push for residency spot expansion. See, the AAMC wants unlimited room for increasing medical school spots, aka its revenue. But eventually, this expansion is going to bump against the number of residency spots, which while growing, are not growing anywhere near as fast as medical school seats. So the AAMC is lobbying hard for much more rapid expansion of residencies so that this limit to its own growth is removed. And what is it using as its primary tool in this lobbying effort? The specter of a calamitous "physician shortage" that is going to strike us down any day now unless we give the AAMC the extra residency spots that it craves, of course.

Sure, all that is going to do is flood the country with doctors and make our job market as effed as law, pharmacy, etc, but that's none of the AAMC's problem. They'll already have cashed the tuition checks by then.

Exactly. And you'll still have a bunch of desperate premeds fighting tooth and nail to get into all these half-assed medical schools popping up. The plan works because it preys on the desperation of 20 year old science majors.

 

[Dr. Doogie]

How would they have % of in and oos applicants when the first class starts fall 2017?

I read that wrong, those numbers just refer to the MN school. Though I imagine it'll be similar for AZ, generally. I bet this first round of applications will dramatically skew those numbers.


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[Dr. Doogie]

.

 

[Dr. Doogie]

Exactly. And you'll still have a bunch of desperate premeds fighting tooth and nail to get into all these half-assed medical schools popping up. The plan works because it preys on the desperation of 20 year old science majors.

You're probably right. I definitely expect a "half-assed medical school" to pop up from Mayo Clinic.

Though I see your point, I'm glad my attempt to be a little helpful to others gave you a platform to share your opinion.


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[username456789]

You're probably right. I definitely expect a "half-assed medical school" to pop up from Mayo Clinic.

Though I see your point, I'm glad my attempt to be a little helpful to others gave you a platform to share your opinion.


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Happy to help.

 

[NeuResurgens]

I think you're probably right on some fronts, it's always hard to trust information when the person who is giving it has a job on the line to make sure it takes. But there is at least some sort of a shortage, if only in rural and poor areas. That is more a matter of resource allocation and healthy policy. But honestly, even if you think medicine will get too bloated it's not the worst thing. For instance, here in the PHX valley there is a dentist on every corner. Yet, new dental practices that are business-savvy capitalize on this. I, for one, don't really worry about it because I'm confident I can be successful in several roles with a medical school education.

So, yeah, sounds like you've got a grasp on the AAMC "conspiracy" better than I do, sorry to ruffle the feathers.


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Yes, as I understand it there is not a shortage at all, but rather a distribution problem (both by geographic location and by specialties).

 

[Skydive Fox]

For real, you answered all my questions regarding Mayo AZ

 

[Gastrapathy]

Mayo has franchising down. There are Mayo "affiliated" hospitals in my city and the only real connection is access to their library and some big signs that say Mayo.

When they have a tough case, they ship it to the local referral center not to Mayo. We wondered whether that would change when they paid for the Mayo name but it didn't.

 

[Mansamusa]

There is no shortage of doctors, and this sort of thing is going to end up hurting doctors in the end. We are going the way of lawyers, unfortunately.

Fortunately so far there have been more threats to start defunding residencies rather than opening more. I just need to make sure the expansion doesn't happen for several more years, so I have the chance to live at least a few years like a resident with an attending salary to pay down my debt.

 

[raiderette]

Mayo can fund their own residencies if it ever came to that. But the only people hurt by Mayo adding 50 to their class will be DO or Caribbean schools. Mayo knows how to train excellent doctors. They will now just be doing it in a nicer location.

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[username456789]

Mayo can fund their own residencies if it ever came to that. But the only people hurt by Mayo adding 50 to their class will be DO or Caribbean schools. Mayo knows how to train excellent doctors. They will now just be doing it in a nicer location.

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This is amazingly short-sighted.

 

[Brahnold Bloodaxe]

Fortunately so far there have been more threats to start defunding residencies rather than opening more. I just need to make sure the expansion doesn't happen for several more years, so I have the chance to live at least a few years like a resident with an attending salary to pay down my debt.

That's not entirely accurate. The overall number of residency spots is growing at around 2% a year, but this disguises the fact that some specialties are being dip****s about it while others are smartly playing their cards right. Ortho and derm haven't had significant increases in spots since the last 10 years, while EM expanded by a couple hundred spots in just the last 2 to 3 years.

Ultimately, I think Ortho is and will remain the gold standard. I don't think it would be easy to open up a bunch more programs at a rapid rate even if they wanted to do it, because it's just not that easy to create surgical subspecialty programs out of thin air. As long as it stays at ~700 spots it'll be protected from the ****show of substandard medical schools popping up like worms after a rain shower. And unlike derm there is no midlevel threat.

 

[occams_razor]

There is no shortage of doctors, and this sort of thing is going to end up hurting doctors in the end. We are going the way of lawyers, unfortunately.

Mayo's med school class is tiny..it's the smallest med school... At the Mayo Clinic in MN there are only 40-50 new MD matriculants each year (usually closer to 40 MD only, with a few MD/PhD). The AZ campus will also be small. So at most, Mayo med school is expanding the class size to 100 per year. This is still smaller than the average MD school.

Mayo expanding the class size by opening another campus isn't going to hurt doctors in the end. More excellent physicians will be produced. I have no doubt that it will remain extremely competitive.

I appreciate that new med schools popping up can be a concern, but I don't think Mayo should be included in this discussion, as this really isn't a new med school.

 

[username456789]

Mayo's med school class is tiny..it's the smallest med school... At the Mayo Clinic in MN there are only 40-50 new MD matriculants each year (usually closer to 40 MD only, with a few MD/PhD). The AZ campus will also be small. So at most, Mayo med school is expanding the class size to 100 per year. This is still smaller than the average MD school.

Mayo expanding the class size by opening another campus isn't going to hurt doctors in the end. More excellent physicians will be produced. I have no doubt that it will remain extremely competitive.

I appreciate that new med schools popping up can be a concern, but I don't think Mayo should be included in this discussion, as this really isn't a new med school.

Other medical schools expanding existing class sizes is just as much part of the problem.

Flooding the market with more physicians is not in your best interest.