The University of Washington is making good on its commitment to expand medical education in Eastern Washington with its recent partnership with Gonzaga University, and the Spokane-area health care sector, as well as the business community as a whole, stands to benefit from the new relationship.

The University of Washington School of Medicine-Gonzaga University partnership will train as many as 100 medical students—up to 60 first-year students and 40 second-year students—on the Gonzaga campus starting next fall. Faculty from both Gonzaga and UW will instruct using the medical school’s curriculum, while housed on the Jesuit school’s campus. 

For more than 40 years, UW has taught medical students in Eastern Washington with its WWAMI program. Through WWAMI, which stands for Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho, medical students receive first- and second-year foundational instruction in their respective states before moving on to the medical school in Seattle. 

While the UW medical school has had a presence in Spokane for decades, the partnership marks its first significant increase in the number of medical-school students trained in Spokane. Previously, UW trained 80 WWAMI students in Spokane—40 per class. 

Criticism of stagnant class size had grown louder in recent years, with the biggest critic being UW’s former WWAMI partner, Washington State University. WSU had argued that UW hadn’t kept pace with population growth and that the Inland Northwest—like much of the U.S.—faced a doctor shortage, one that would only grow worse as baby boomers working in medicine reach retirement age. 

WSU ultimately decided, and justifiably so, to pursue starting a medical school independent of UW. Having received strong community support and legislative backing, WSU is moving forward with its exciting plan and is on course to start teaching its own 40-student class of first-year medical students on its Spokane campus in the fall of 2017. 

When WSU first broached the idea of starting a medical school here, debate raged over the best path. Some argued for an independent medical school, complete with full faculty and research capabilities. Others pitched the practicality of expanding the number of students taught here by UW’s medical school, routinely recognized among the nation’s best. 

At the time, the tone of the conversations and the universities’ rhetoric made it sound like one option or the other had to win out. A third option, allowing for both paths, may well prove best. 

A year and a half later, the two state universities appear to be operating on those parallel paths, ones that eventually will go far in addressing physician shortages. 

Scott Morris, CEO of Avista Corp. and chairman of Gonzaga’s board of trustees, lauded the UW-Gonzaga partnership and quoted a past study stating that increasing medical education and related research could have a $1.7 billion annual economic impact. 

While it will take time to see that impact realized, UW and Gonzaga, coupled with WSU are taking medical education in the right direction.