A University of Georgia medical school could quickly add millions of dollars annually to the local economy, but it will take a while before it puts much of a dent in the state’s serious doctor shortage.
Under a feasibility plan approved by the University System Board of Regents earlier this month, the planned medical school’s enrollment would grow incrementally from the 60 students per year now admitted to the Augusta University-University of Georgia Medical Partnership, operated as a kind of satellite campus of Augusta University’s Medical College of Georgia since it launched with 40 first-year medical students in 2010.
Unlike the regents’ 2008 vote to establish the medical partnership, this week’s approval came as a routine vote without controversy. When UGA moved to take over the shuttered Navy Supply Corps School’s campus in 2007—during University System of Georgia Chancellor Sonny Perdue’s gubernatorial administration—Augusta officials pushed back against a UGA-run medical school. But this time Augusta University is on board with the plan.
Students who graduate from the partnership, housed on UGA’s Health Sciences Campus in Normaltown, currently receive their degrees from the Medical College of Georgia. Beginning with the first class to enter an accredited standalone UGA medical school, as early as fall, 2026, they’ll be enrolled at UGA.
The feasibility study by the Tripp Umbach consulting firm calls for a first-year class of 60 in 2026–27, increasing in steps to 120 per class in the 2032–33 academic year. Tripp Umbach also conducted the feasibility study for the medical partnership, a typical first step in establishing new schools of medicine.
Georgia, which consistently ranks among the worst states in health measures, also ranks in the bottom 10 nationally in practicing physicians per capita, and dead last among the 41 states with public medical colleges in the number of public medical school students per 100,000 residents—less than half the national average, according to the feasibility study.
The UGA medical school will be just the second in the state’s public college and university system. Georgia’s four private medical schools—Emory University, Mercer University, Morehouse College and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine—mint about twice as many Georgia doctors annually as the public Medical College of Georgia.
Gov. Brian Kemp budgeted $50 million in state money for the medical school’s startup expenses even before the Board of Regents’ vote. That funding has made it through the state House of Representatives and the Senate Finance Committee, with a full Senate vote the only obstacle remaining.
UGA President Jere Morehead said the school will match that with outside sources such as donations and grants. Expanding to 120 students per class will require up to $96 million in capital costs, according to the Tripp Umbach report.
Since medical school professors are among the highest-paid in academia, a major continuing cost of expansion will be salaries. But infrastructure for the school is largely in place already, owing to the existence of the medical partnership, Morehead said.
A school of medicine will also give a big boost to UGA research revenues, according to Morehead, building on existing strengths such as biomedical engineering, life sciences and veterinary medicine. UGA receives more National Institutes of Health funding annually than any other public university without a medical school ($75.9 million) and with a medical school could double that by 2030, according to the feasibility report. Federal research grants are one of the largest revenue sources for medical schools. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, in the 2022 fiscal year grants accounted for nearly five times the amount received in tuition and fees ($5.8 billion).
Though it won’t be soon, the new UGA medical school could alleviate the state’s critical shortage in primary care physicians, according to the consultants. Primary care is a focus of the medical partnership, and that focus would continue in the UGA medical school, according to the feasibility report. About 70% of partnership graduates at least initially choose a primary care specialty, according to the consultants.
The report identifies the Northeast Georgia Healthcare System, Piedmont Healthcare and St. Mary’s Health Care System as interested partners to provide clinical training.
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