Utah Tech University is partnering with the University of Utah to create a new medical campus in St. George to address the state’s shortage of rural doctors.
The campus will be established by the University of Utah with support from Utah Tech in facilities and student support services. The campus will open in St. George fall 2027 and will start with 10 students a year, with the hope of increasing it over the years.
U of U associate professor Michelle Hofmann said, “We’re really hoping to train what we are calling ‘rural primary care doctors’ in this campus.”
They are looking for students who know that this is the pathway they want to pursue when applying to medical school.
There are three phases to the program. The first phase is in Salt Lake City, where the students will be enrolled at the U of U in a larger class. In phases two and three, which overlap, students will move to St. George and do hands-on and simulation training along with lectures.
Hofmann said, “It’s a really cool opportunity for local students in the region to be supported on a pathway that will eventually address future employment in the region that is in high need.”
Larissa Thomas, a sophomore general studies major from Spanish Fork, said, “St. George specifically has a lot of residents for only having one hospital. I believe it is vital to be training people for all the circumstances for being in such an active environment.”
McKaydee Lindwall, a freshman general studies major from Riverton, said the program will open more pathways and opportunities for students.
The program is intended for students who know that they would like to go back to a community they grew up in and want to be primary care doctors with a knowledge of multiple specialties.
“We are looking for people who want to wear many different hats and do many different things,” Hofmann said. “If we are successful in finding them early, our goal is to put them on a pathway to get them into practice and align incentives that help support them in reducing their debt.”
This program should grow with the demand. It will be built upon itself, as it seeks to recruit, train and retain the physicians locally, creating a base of doctors that will be able to train more physicians in the future.
“But until we get to that point of building that base, we have to be careful about growing too quickly and diminishing the students’ training experience because we don’t have enough doctors to train them,” Hofmann said.
The U of U currently has two graduate health sciences education programs in partnership with Utah Tech. The physician assistant program was established in 2018, and the doctor of physical therapy program was established in 2022.
The medical doctor program is the newest program that the U of U is bringing to Utah Tech. The program will include four years of training, and then students will need to do additional training for the field they choose.
Hofmann said, “We are doing something unique in southern Utah for this cohort of 10 students, where we are establishing an additional curriculum for them targeted towards rural primary care and population health.”
