I hope there's another Med school on the way. We are in desperate need from the reports I hear. In my clinic, we are understaffed. In the clinics in Sacramento, we are understaffed (clinician- wise, I mean).
It's ridiculous.
I was just listening to NPR this morning and I don't recall who was in charge of the study, but federally there was a study ranking the Emergency Medicine availability in states - CA topped out with a B+. However, various docs in LA were interviewed this morning, and the actual care time/triage etc was ranked very low because they are overrun with people- 9 ERs were closed over the past 3 years, I believe. That's incredible, considering the growing population in this state. As an applicant, it definitely frustrates me that we don't have more schools here.
I would love to see UCSC have a med school, but they don't have a teaching hospital- Dominican is too small, although Watsonville would be relatively good. SB I think has the same problem. I see it happening at UC Merced. That'd be interesting- probably would be a major center for migrant farm worker care. Do you guys know that the second fastest growing HIV+ population in this state is male migrant farm workers? They are accounting for approx 30% of positives in Sac area - farm owners are importing prostitutes from Mexico for a very low price and many of these women are already infected. The HIV subtype in CA gives a 9% chance of female-male transmission, but the East Asian subtype is 50/50 transmission (one is A, one is E, I don't remember which is which-apologies).
In any case, I hope something opens soon. We need it. Our population is not getting smaller- 😱
