Medical Education

Health studies and medical education are in the midst of exciting growth in Spokane.

Greater Spokane Incorporated (GSI) is providing community leadership to help put Spokane on the map as a world-class center for academic health sciences, medical education and bioscience research and development. The vision includes major expansions of medical and health science education at the undergraduate andgraduate levels to begin in 2017. The goal is to have that plan fully functioning by 2030. The project will bring industry growth to life with unprecedented economic impact to the Spokane region, ultimately bringing in $1.7 billion annually and creating more than 9,000 jobs over 20 years.

Washington State University recently received state legislative approval to create an independently accredited four-year medical school on the WSU Spokane campus. It will be housed in the recently-created College of Medical Sciences. The accreditation process is underway and the charter class of 40 students is set to start in the fall of 2017. The class size will ultimately grow to 120 students.

The University of Washington School of Medicine’s WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Idaho) four-year medical school program is on course to grow from 40 students per class to 60 by the fall of 2016. Those students will continue to attend courses at the WSU Spokane campus facilities.

Also helping in the growth of the number of physicians in our region is the expansion of medical residency programs. The creation of the Spokane Teaching Health Consortium, a consortium of WSU Spokane, Empire Health Foundation and Providence Health Care, was created to grow the number of primary care residencies, particularly Family Medicine and Internal Medicine. A new clinic called the University District Health Clinic is under construction on the WSU Spokane campus and will serve as a venue for medical residents to practice while serving community health care needs. The clinic is slated to open in mid-2016.