Rowan dean wishes new North Jersey medical school good luck

Dr. Paul Katz is the dean of New Jersey’s newest medical school, Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in Camden, which will graduate its first class of 48 doctors in 2016.He currently strives to attract medical students with strong New Jersey ties who are likely to remain here and help relieve the state’s looming doctor shortage — a mission similar to that of the new medical school being developed by Seton Hall University and Hackensack University Health Network.

Katz said he welcomes the new medical school and would be glad to offer its founders the benefit of his experience starting a new med school from scratch: Cooper opened its doors in 2012.

“We wish our colleagues to the north good luck and to the extent that we can be helpful to them we are eager to do so,” Katz said. 

“I commend them for their eagerness to do this. It is no small task,” he said, noting that nearly 20 new medical schools were started in the U.S. since 2007.

There is just one critical and long-running problem the new medical school will confront, he said: how to get more doctors to practice in New Jersey.

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New Jersey is projecting by 2020 to be short about 2,800 doctors, about 1,000 of them primary care physicians, he said.

“The big challenge for our state is that we have not done a very good job at retaining the graduates of our residency programs,” Katz said. New Jersey ranks 35^th nationally when it comes to retaining doctors who do their residencies at New Jersey teaching hospitals: “So we’ve done a very good job of educating and training physicians to practice elsewhere.”

Katz said New Jersey could use more graduate medical education spots — known as medical residencies — in which, after their graduation from medical school, doctors specialize in a range of disciplines such as family medicine, orthopedics or neurology.

He said the residencies “are too few and they are largely financed by Medicare, which is unlikely to increase the numbers.”

Hackensack University Medical Center trains residents, and Katz said a way to help address the doctor shortage will be to encourage future graduates of the new medical school to do their residencies at Hackensack.

“There is some pretty good data showing that where physicians practice is most closely related to where they do their residency training,” Katz said. “So one of things that we’re trying to make sure of is that we help facilitate their entry into residency programs in New Jersey.”

One challenge for New Jersey is that both New York and Pennsylvania hospitals “are replete with many and very high quality residency programs and many of the graduates of our medical schools choose to go to them, and they may or may not come back to New Jersey,” he said.

Doctors also are inclined to practice medicine in the state where they grew up, he said.

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New Jersey’s existing medical schools are all “focused on bringing in a majority of our students who are (from) New Jersey,” he said. Nearly 70 percent of the students at his school are from New Jersey.

Once the doctors complete their residency, Katz said, the next challenge is to “work hard to place these young men and women into (medical) practices in our state.” 

Katz said: “We need to try to keep the best and the brightest here. We’ve spent time and obviously state money and precious resources to educate physicians. And we have an obligation to improve the health and the wellbeing of the people who live in our state.”

Asked if the new medical school will increase competition among New Jersey medical schools looking to enroll state residents, Katz said currently the nation is “at an all-time record high for applicants (to medical school). And so I don’t think any medical school is concerned about finding high quality applicants who are capable of doing the work.”

According to a Cooper spokesperson, last year 1,835 New Jersey residents applied to medical schools and about 400 of those were to out of state schools only.

Currently the nation is “at all-time record high for applicants (to medical school). And so I don’t think any medical school is concerned about finding high quality applicants who are capable of doing the work,” he said.

RELATED: Hackensack University Health Network, Seton Hall to create medical school on former Roche campus

Cooper seeks to “admit students who live in our state and also are capable of the rigors of medical school. But for us it is very important that they match our mission, and our mission is about underserved communities, innovation in medical education and creating physicians leaders. So there are capable students who we would choose perhaps not to admit because, while they would be able to do (it), they don’t really fall in line with the kind of product, if you will, that we’re trying to graduate,” Katz said.

Katz said he would be glad to offer any advice that might help the new medical school.

Through the years, new medical schools “have been very collaborative in terms of helping each other, and I’m sure that will be the case for this new school. We are all in this together: As others have helped us, we are happy to help anybody else who is out there and wants our advice,” he said.

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