Are Medical Schools Financially Stable/Profitable?

[Commer_Knocker]

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So, I've heard varying perspectives on this. I had always been under the impression that, unlike our counterparts in law, medical schools lose money per student. I also perpetually hear of my school's financial woes.

Then again, I recently also heard that tuition is too high at most medical schools, since they can somewhat collude to raise tuition across the board.

So my question is, which is it? I really have no knowledge on this, and I'm at this point just looking for someone familiar with the finances of medical education to shed some insight as to where our tuition dollars are going.

 

[OnePunchBiopsy]

I have always heard from professors at law schools that it is easier to start/maintain a law school financially because law is learned through books and verbal interactions. Whereas medical education takes books, medical technology, and other expensive variables that come with practicing medicine.

 

[The Knife & Gun Club]

California Northstate would be a pretty bad move if it wasn't possible to make a profitable medical school...

 

[Goro]

MD schools will lose money on students, because there's a lot of required stuff LCME makes them have (like research facilities)

DO schools are in a better position because most of them lack teaching hospitals (which can be major money pits) and aren't required to have research facilities. But rotation sites don't come for free for either MD or DO schools.

I can't speak for CNU or BCOM, because they're rookie institutions, but RVU has shown that one can operate a med school in a for-profit model.

Keep in mind that a decent research department can pull in more money in a single year in indirect funding from extramural grants than from an entire class of 100+ students paying tuition.

So where does the money go?

Facilities and infrastructure
Insurance
Staff and Faculty salaries
Oversight (meaning, making sure you are doing what you're supposed to be doing)
Logistics (cadavers, IT, subscriptions, anything for training, student health, etc)
The parent organization (for example, monies from students at, say, Mercer or UNECOM go into the general fund for the rest of the campus; this is analogous to the Surgery Dep't keeping afloat the Primary Care Dep't.)

So, I've heard varying perspectives on this. I had always been under the impression that, unlike our counterparts in law, medical schools lose money per student. I also perpetually hear of my school's financial woes.

Then again, I recently also heard that tuition is too high at most medical schools, since they can somewhat collude to raise tuition across the board.

So my question is, which is it? I really have no knowledge on this, and I'm at this point just looking for someone familiar with the finances of medical education to shed some insight as to where our tuition dollars are going.

 

[Mad Jack]

They're pretty transparent on the osteopathic side of things. Here's what it looks like:

http://www.aacom.org/docs/default-source/data-and-trends/fy2013-RevandExpbyCOM.pdf?sfvrsn=28

 

[The Knife & Gun Club]

They're pretty transparent on the osteopathic side of things. Here's what it looks like:

http://www.aacom.org/docs/default-source/data-and-trends/fy2013-RevandExpbyCOM.pdf?sfvrsn=28

Wow so they actually turn a respectable profit overall. Midwestern makes $23 million/year!

(although I guess thats not a ton when you have healthcare systems raking in hundreds of millions per year)

 

[Goro]

My school does well also, but our controlling organization sucks the blood out of us.

Wow so they actually turn a respectable profit overall. Midwestern makes $23 million/year!

(although I guess thats not a ton when you have healthcare systems raking in hundreds of millions per year)

 

[SKaminski]

Are there any statistics to show that MD schools don't make money?

 

[The Knife & Gun Club]

I'd imagine the MD stats would be way harder to compile if possible at all both because of the number of schools and because of all the weird med school models that exist in MD

I could be wrong but I feel like there's much more variation in the allo world versus osteo. Most DO schools seem to be cut from a similar mold in that they're relatively autonomous, usually aren't linked with a single hospital, exist within smaller university systems that don't have a very large research funding/presence (obviously there's exceptions to all of these). This would make its easier to determine how much they take in and how much they spend.

Allo schools are all over the place. Some are part of big universities, some are part of a teaching hospital with no university at all, and some are a mix of the two. Then there are publics, privates, and some weird joint ventures. Then there are multiple schools and programs within a school (university vs college track at Case Western/Cleveland Clinic). And what the hell do you do with the Canadian schools...

 

[The Knife & Gun Club]

Tldr; I'd bet teasing out the earnings and expenses for many schools would be a huge pain

 

[Bobdabuilda14]

This used to be 3-4 small buildings big.

 

[Commer_Knocker]

This used to be a 3-4 small buildings big.

Is that SABA? I'm not too good with Carib schools.

I know all Carib schools operated at a profit. I was just wondering if any US MDs did.

 

[masaraksh]

This used to be a 3-4 small buildings big.

A friend of mine's roommate in college was basically pressured by his parents to go to med school and ended up at some school offshore...

Don't people who go to those schools literally not match?



As for the original topic - I'm sure med schools net make money.

 

[hunterjumper14]

Today or Dean estimated that the med school pays about $100k for each of us, and our tuition is ~$35 (in state) or ~55K. I was actually really surprised by that figure! Crazy 😵

 

[Psai]

Today or Dean estimated that the med school pays about $100k for each of us, and our tuition is ~$35 (in state) or ~55K. I was actually really surprised by that figure! Crazy 😵

Did you ask them for a breakdown

 

[DrHalsey]

Is that SABA? I'm not too good with Carib schools.

I know all Carib schools operated at a profit. I was just wondering if any US MDs did.

No that isnt SABA, SABA is a very small volcanic island that literally consists of the volcano itself.

 

[aim-agm]

Today or Dean estimated that the med school pays about $100k for each of us, and our tuition is ~$35 (in state) or ~55K. I was actually really surprised by that figure! Crazy 😵

So the school makes 10k (instate) or 30k (OOS) per student per year, not counting subsidies and donations.

 

[jw3600]

Today or Dean estimated that the med school pays about $100k for each of us, and our tuition is ~$35 (in state) or ~55K. I was actually really surprised by that figure! Crazy 😵

They are lying.

 

[sloop]

I will say that I have trouble understanding where the money goes at my medical school. Still, what I will say is that most M.D. Schools are not-for-profit (though this is not entirely true of teaching hospitals, many of which are for-profit), so it's not like there are board members to pay. Of course revenues may be feeding into the checks of administrators and big wigs, but it does make me think that somewhere in medical education there is a gigantic money sink that, while objectionable in the sense of being extraordinarily inefficient, is not necessarily some sort of capitalistic conspiracy. I find it hard to believe that all the money is just being channeled into people's salaries. I mean, that's a lot of money.

My guesses:

I'm sure affiliate clinical sites have something to do with it.

The school also runs several clinics with the explicit purpose of training med students while helping people who do not have insurance (sometimes they have Medicaid, but I've worked with these patients and many of them don't even have that. These are illegal immigrants who don't speak English, people I suspect may have warrants, etc.)

I know that journal access and IT costs are probably part of it.

Still, I don't know where it all goes. Over the course of their time here, the school makes over $200k per student and we have a lot of students. Despite this, the university was at one point planning to cut library checkout hours to a point that second years would have to leave lecture early to check out a book. To be fair, this policy was being pushed by the main university library system, not the medical school. Reportedly, one of the main library administrators met with one of our deans and offered to "extend hours during finals," at which point the dean laughed in her face and schooled her on how "finals" per se are not really a thing in medical school.

 

[Psai]

I will say that I have trouble understanding where the money goes at my medical school. Still, what I will say is that most M.D. Schools are not-for-profit (though this is not entirely true of teaching hospitals, many of which are for-profit), so it's not like there are board members to pay. Of course revenues may be feeding into the checks of administrators and big wigs, but it does make me think that somewhere in medical education there is a gigantic money sink that, while objectionable in the sense of being extraordinarily inefficient, is not necessarily some sort of capitalistic conspiracy. I find it hard to believe that all the money is just being channeled into people's salaries. I mean, that's a lot of money.

My guesses:

I'm sure affiliate clinical sites have something to do with it.

The school also runs several clinics with the explicit purpose of training med students while helping people who do not have insurance (sometimes they have Medicaid, but I've worked with these patients and many of them don't even have that. These are illegal immigrants who don't speak English, people I suspect may have warrants, etc.)

I know that journal access and IT costs are probably part of it.

Still, I don't know where it all goes. Over the course of their time here, the school makes over $200k per student and we have a lot of students. Despite this, the university was at one point planning to cut library checkout hours to a point that second years would have to leave lecture early to check out a book. To be fair, this policy was being pushed by the main university library system, not the medical school. Reportedly, one of the main library administrators met with one of our deans and offered to "extend hours during finals," at which point the dean laughed in her face and schooled her on how "finals" per se are not really a thing in medical school.

Every day is finals in medical school