Proposal in Sacramento would double enrollment at UC Riverside School of Medicine

By Jeff Horseman

Hoping to stave off “a public health crisis” from afflicting the Inland Empire, Riverside’s delegation to Sacramento wants tens of millions of dollars in state funding so UC Riverside’s medical school can double its enrollment.

State Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, announced Wednesday, Jan. 9 his sponsorship of a bill, SB 56, to spend $80 million on “a dedicated facility” for the UCR School of Medicine that would take its enrollment from 250 to 500 students. The bill also seeks $25 million in ongoing state support for an expanded school, an increase from the $15 million it gets now.

A bigger school would bring more doctors to a region with one of the nation’s most severe shortages of primary care physicians, Roth said in a news release.

“Inland Southern California is experiencing a surge in its economy and population as the region veers into a public health crisis,” he said. “If we don’t act now to alleviate this dire need, we will regret it.”

Assembly members Sabrina Cervantes and Jose Medina, both D-Riverside, support the bill.

“Expanding the School of Medicine will allow UCR to continue providing advanced medical care, train more physicians, and keep up with the demands of our growing region,” Cervantes said.

“We need to invest in the expansion of the UCR Medical School to ensure that the Inland Empire, which is historically underserved, has sufficient access to high-quality health care for years to come,” Medina said.

The medical school also is credited with helping UCR have a $2.7 billion impact on the national economy, according to a 2017 report released by the university.

Roth’s bill has the medical school’s support.

The bill “provides a funding path that will allow the UC Riverside School of Medicine to expand and better fulfill our mission to train a physician workforce to serve the healthcare needs of the people of Inland Southern California,” Dean Deborah Deas said in an emailed statement.

“It will put us on par, financially, with other schools of our size and provide the unique opportunity to build an innovative education facility that will allow UCR School of Medicine to increase the medical school class size.”

The fight to build and fund the medical school goes back to at least 2003, when UCR’s chancellor started planning for a four-year school to train doctors.

UC’s Board of Regents OK’d the project in 2006, and plans called for the first class of doctors to enroll in the fall of 2012. But in 2011, financial pressures forced the state to pull funding for the school, which was denied accreditation due to a lack of money.

Eventually, $100 million in local and UC money was committed to the school, which got a further boost in 2013 with the dedication of $15 million of ongoing annual state funding. The school opened its doors in fall 2013 with a class of 50 students. It gained full accreditation in 2017, when the first class graduated.

But even with the medical school running at capacity, the the Inland Empire continues to face a doctor shortage. Roth’s office cited California Health Care Foundation data showing the region had 35 physicians for every 100,000 residents, about half the rate considered healthy.

“The region’s population will continue to grow meaning this crisis will worsen unless more doctors are educated and trained locally,” the press release from Roth’s office read.

Budget constraints forced the medical school to use an existing building on UCR’s campus that caps enrollment at 250, according to the press release.

The push for more medical school funding comes as new California Gov. Gavin Newsom prepares to unveil his first state budget Thursday.

The governor’s ambitious agenda includes more money for universal pre-K education and health care. The medical school also faces competition from a wide variety of other spending requests from other state lawmakers hoping to take advantage of still-strong tax revenues.

Roth is optimistic about getting the medical school more state funding.

“(Newsom’s) expressed interest in one-time investments to tackle various policy priorities is further encouraging as the UCR School of Medicine expansion is one of those strategic investments,” he said. “This investment will create a pipeline to fill this dire need in a historically under served region of this state.”