2023-10-03 17:48:53
UNV has an ambitious plan to attract 100 doctors to Las Vegas. (UNLV) Construction continues on the medical education building at the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022, in Las Vegas. (Chase Stevens/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @csstevensphoto Dr. Marc J. Kahn, Dean of the UNLV School of Medicine (Josh Hawkins/UNLV Photo Services)
UNLV’s Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine has an ambitious plan that might help the state’s ailing health care sector: getting 100 doctors to the city.
The dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Dr. Marc Kahn, said that the university hopes that part of those 100 doctors will be national, but the vast majority of them will have to come from other states. Since the UNLV medical school opened its permanent campus – located west of Interstate 15 and south of Highway 95 – in 2022, they have had room to increase the school’s capacity, but doing so is easier said than done, He said.
“We need more doctors, and we need to make it easy to bring doctors here and make it attractive for them to come,” he said. “One of the problems is that our medical students only have a 50 percent chance of staying in the state (upon graduation).”
Now that the infrastructure is in place, Kahn said the hard part begins.
“We have approximately around 180 interns and we have a class size of 60,” he said. “And we have plans to move to regarding 90 students per class, which has been made possible by the move to this medical building. So now we have space and facilities for more students, but to increase class sizes we need more faculty.”
Kahn, a hematologist and medical oncologist by training, has been pushing for more money for UNLV’s two medical schools (there’s also one in Reno), as part of a larger push to lift the state out of its dismal ranking in health care, which Gov. Joe Lombardo supported in his 2023 State of the State address. UNLV medical schools have recently received $8.5 million in state funding.
Also this year, Becker’s Physician Leadership, a health care publication, ranked Nevada last in the country for its physician shortage, and access to quality care in Las Vegas remains a top spot of discord for residents.
Kahn said the goal starts with a two-pronged approach, the first being to get more residency graduates to stay.
“We will get some doctors from the community, and one of our strategies is to have our own interns who finish this year and next year, we are going to have jobs for them and try to recruit those who want to stay.”
Of course, getting out-of-state doctors in various fields remains the primary goal, and Kahn said that given the strict guidelines for doctors to practice in the United States basically means they’re all going to have to come from within the country.
“This is where things get complicated, because if you haven’t trained in the United States, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to obtain a license. “Canada is a little different because there is some reciprocity, but it is still a big challenge.”
Kahn said UNLV is targeting doctors at various stages of their careers through a national campaign, trying to get doctors to decide to move to Las Vegas for a variety of reasons, including lifestyle, climate and climate. cheaper cost of living. According to him, this has become much easier in recent years, given the rapid expansion of Las Vegas in various sectors, especially in the sports entertainment market, with the addition of the Las Vegas Raiders of the NFL and the Vegas Golden Knights of the NHL, plus the MLB’s Oakland Athletics and the prospect of an NBA franchise.
Another major obstacle, according to Kahn, is the slow pace of Nevada’s licensing process, which is handled by the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners, which did not respond to a request for comment from the Las Vegas Review-Journal regarding its timeline. processing.
Although there is no national ranking study, according to the Medical Board of California, the average wait time to obtain a physician’s license in that state is regarding three and a half months.
“It took me seven months to get a license, it needs to be reformed,” said Kahn, who moved from New Orleans and said there are also a number of bureaucratic hoops to jump through to get a license. “I think we have some insurance issues that we need to address, in many states it can take 300 days to get a doctor accredited into one of our managed Medicaid plans.”
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