Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Prognosis improving

Nevada's chronic need for health care professionals is being addressed by the likes of Matthew McGauran, who is a few weeks shy of getting his physician assistant license.

He's begun shadowing family medicine physicians and internal medicine doctors and soon enough will be seeing patients on his own, diagnosing and treating their symptoms , and prescribing medication.

McGauran, 33, is important to the state's health care picture because he is home grown, having received his medical schooling in Nevada.

But not at a public school.

He graduated from the private Touro University in Henderson.

And he's just the kind of graduate Nevada is counting on to improve its ranking near the bottom of all states in terms of health care professionals per capita.

As Nevada System of Higher Education officials plead for more money to increase the number of students in the state's medical school and double enrollment in nursing, they welcome the contribution from private universities like Touro - the only school in Nevada to offer a physician assistants program.

Touro graduated its first 31 physician assistants last month. Next spring Touro will graduate its first class of 77 osteopathic physicians and will soon after produce 2 1/2 times more doctors a year than the University of Nevada School of Medicine does now. The school offers other programs in nursing and occupational health.

Touro's contribution goes beyond the classroom. In the past six months the state medical school and Touro have formed a consortium with representatives from the state's hospitals to work on expanding the number of residencies and fellowships offered in Nevada.

Both institutions agree that the doctors who train here are more likely to practice here.

"Expanding graduate medical education is absolutely critical," said Mitchell Forman, dean of Touro's College of Osteopathic Medicine. "If we don't do this, we won't keep doctors in Nevada."

Nevada higher education officials also are working on partnerships with the University of Southern Nevada, which offers the state's only pharmacy school, and have expanded various faculty and research partnerships with the Nevada Cancer Institute, the Ruvo Brain Institute, the Lili Claire Foundation and the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease.

Public higher-education officials say their health science vision depends on such cooperation.

"It's self-evident that all of those groups need to expand and continue to produce (medical field workers) because we cannot produce enough in the university system," said Regent James Dean Leavitt, chairman of the Board of Regents health science committee.

Among the deals being worked out between the public and private medical schools, for instance, is one that allows UNLV and Nevada State College students to start their health science training at Touro or the University of Southern Nevada without having to finish their fourth year of schooling at the state schools. After spending three years in undergraduate science classes at UNLV or Nevada State College, the students will be able to transfer to the private schools for their senior year, to begin training in osteopathic medicine, occupational therapy, physician assistant or pharmacy. Students will earn their bachelor's degree from the public institution and continue training at the private school.

Touro and UNLV have also received preliminary approval to develop a joint degree program in which students considering jobs in medical research can earn a doctorate of osteopathy from Touro and a doctorate in science from UNLV.

Increasing research and improving patient care are the foundation of the university system's other partnerships, said John McDonald, dean of the state's medical school. The state medical school, along with UNLV, has or is developing joint faculty appointments with Lili Claire and the Ruvo, Whittemore Peterson and Nevada Cancer institutes. Shared facilities for research are also planned.

One goal of the fledgling health science system is to promote a statewide collaboration on health issues affecting Nevadans, said Marcia Turner, interim vice chancellor of health sciences.

One example is the state's partnerships with the Nevada Cancer Institute. Members of its faculty treat patients at the institute and teach classes at the state's universities, partnering with university researchers on projects such as radiation's effects on normal tissue, and offering residency and internship experiences for students. UNLV and UNR faculty similarly do joint work at the institute.

The cancer institute has also offered research grants to professors and scholarships to nursing students.

This spring the medical school began construction on a research facility that will include space for the cancer institute and the Whittemore Peterson Institute, which specializes in chronic fatigue syndrome. Financed with state and private funding, the Center for Molecular Medicine will house parts of the medical school's basic science courses, the patient care and research efforts for two institutions.

In Las Vegas, the medical school wants to build its Center for Healthy Aging next to the Ruvo Brain Institut e in downtown's Union Park. The center will complement the Brain Institute, which also will tap medical school faculty in its treatment and research programs.

"The idea is to build bridges across disciplines, across organizations," said Zaven Khachaturian, president and chief executive of Keep Memory Alive, the foundation supporting the Brain Institute. "We need to take advantage of each other's capabilities."

The medical school's longest-running partnership is with Lili Claire, which offers free medical treatment to children with neurogenetic conditions such as William's syndrome, autism and fetal alcohol syndrome. The school's geneticist, Colleen Morris, doubles as the medical director for Lili Claire. The medical school's neuropsychologist and behavioralist help evaluate the young patients, and the foundation follows up with social and educational support for the families. The foundation's Las Vegas clinics double as training sites for medical students.

The partnerships between the public and private universities are perhaps the most intriguing because they promote cooperation among schools that might seem competitive.

Touro officials said the role of private medical schools is crucial to Nevada if the state hopes to retain home-grown health professionals like McGauran, a Boulder City High School and UNLV graduate.

If everyone expands, "we might someday actually begin to address this significant shortage," said Michael Harter, Touro's vice president and chief executive .