UC Regents Consider Health Care Expansions
A committee of the University of California Board of Regents on Tuesday will meet to discuss a proposal to increase medical school enrollment by almost 1,000 students and add a sixth medical school at UC-Riverside, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The expansion plan is included in a report by an advisory council convened by UC President Robert Dynes and seeks to reverse the state's growing shortage of physicians. According to the report, there will be a shortage of up to 17,000 doctors in California by 2015.
The plan calls for increasing UC enrollment by 2020 as follows:
- 34% in UC medical schools;
- 100% for pharmacy programs;
- 130% for nursing master's degree programs;
- 180% for both master's and doctoral public health programs; and
- 425% for nursing doctoral program enrollments.
The board of regents on Tuesday also will hear a request from UCLA officials for an additional $308 million to complete the Ronald Reagan Medical Center on its Westwood campus and build a new hospital in Santa Monica, the Los Angeles Times reports. If approved, the cost for both facilities will exceed $1.3 billion.
More than half of the additional funding would be used to complete the 525-bed facility in Westwood. Occupancy is expected next fall. The 172-bed Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital is scheduled to open in 2009.
The full Board of Regents on Thursday is expected to vote on the request (Engel/Trounson, Los Angeles Times, 11/14).