UMass Medical School to open Springfield campus

Courtesy photo UMass Medical School Chancellor Michael F. Collins said the medical school's new Springfield campus will expand research and clinical trial capacity, in addition to creating more capacity for students interested in rural and urban primary care.

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By Emily Micucci

The University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) announced plans Monday to open a regional clinical campus of the Worcester-based medical school in Springfield along with Baystate Health and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The plans were revealed during an afternoon press conference at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield. The new campus will be a collaboration between the three institutions, expanding the state’s only public medical school. It will be the first UMMS regional campus located in Western Massachusetts.

Studies at the campus will focus on rural and primary care, population health, and integrated health management, according to a statement released Monday.

Students will begin enrolling in the UMMS-Baystate Health campus track in the 2017-2018 school year, according to the statement. They will complete basic science courses at the Worcester campus, while completing their clinical requirements at the Springfield campus. The program will allow UMMS to increase its class size from 125 to 150 over the next two years, one of the school's goals.

Academic affiliation to shift away from Tufts

Baystate Health now serves as the Western Massachusetts teaching center for students attending Tufts University School of Medicine in Medford. While Tufts students will continue to have opportunities to train at Baystate, the organizations said the system's primary academic affiliation will likely shift to UMMS.

“We share a mission of working to improve the health of our neighbors through excellence in education, care delivery and research, and UMMS-Baystate Health will, in particular, allow us to expand our population health research and community-based clinical trials in significant and meaningful ways,” UMMS Chancellor Michael F. Collins said in the statement.

The new Springfield campus will increase access to an affordable medical education for Massachusetts students, increase the number of doctors trained in urban and rural primary care, and apply academic research in improving population health, reducing health disparities and supporting health care integration.

According to data from the Massachusetts Medical Society, the physician shortage that plagues the entire country is particularly challenging in Western Massachusetts. A recent survey found that 75 percent of doctors in Springfield, and nearly 78 percent of doctors in Pittsfield, reported an inadequate pool of physicians; the number of doctors who said it was "significantly difficult to fill vacancies" in those regions was more than double the rate in Boston.

Clinical trials, research to expand

The three organizations will also create an Institute for Integrated Health Care Delivery Research. This will be a joint effort of the medical school’s Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, Baystate Health, and UMass Amherst’s School of Public Health.

The creation of an M.D./Master of Public Health program is also being explored, according to the release, and is expected to increase the availability of clinical trials for patients in Western Massachusetts within a new Center for Clinical Trials within the Baystate Health system.