450.020 Overall Plan for Operation of UMKC Medical School

Bd. Min. 6-25-71, p. 35,926; Bd. Min. 3-22-02

I am submitting information regarding our plans for the development of the Medical School at U.M.K.C.

This new school will graduate 100 M.D.s each year when in full operation. The first graduates will be in June, 1974.

The academic plan is based upon coordination of resources, not upon building a medical center and tenured faculty.

To have access to necessary hospitals and health centers and to the teaching time of their staff, affiliation agreements have been negotiated. These vary slightly between institutions but are essentially understandings wherein the Medical School has first priority with the institution’s educational resources. In no circumstances is there the suggestion or implication that the University has any fiscal responsibility for patient care or service. The arrangement relates entirely to undergraduate (prior to the M.D.) education.

With each affiliating institution and dependent upon the ‘teaching load’ the University will, each year, negotiate a satisfactory contract and pay that institution for the undergraduate teaching effort required for the U.M.K.C. medical students. In none of these arrangements is University tenure or regular appointments involved.

These institutional affiliations are: (see: Section 470.030).

The above arrangements will provide the needed patient care experience and a considerable amount of the teaching. Two other sources of teaching are also involved.

These are (a) coordinated teaching in the basic sciences with the U.M.K.C. College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Dentistry, School of Pharmacy and (b) intensive personal instruction in small groups by competent, comprehensive care clinicians (Docents). In this latter group again, no tenure is implied.

To provide the coordinating, administrative management structure, we have departed from the traditional departments in a medical center. The traditional method of administration divides the curriculum up into segments which are convenient for running a hospital (surgery, obstetrics, medicine, ENT) or are convenient for running a graduate school (anatomy, biochemistry, physiology). Instead, this new school has brought together clinicians, humanists, and basic scientists and formed departments which deal with the whole, not the parts: These are Curriculum,, Selection, Evaluation. These are the three major departments (councils) plus the Docents.

The budget allocations of the new school are therefore in the following categories:

1. Office of the Dean and his staff.
2. The three administrative departments (or councils).
3. The Docent Units.
4. The library, audio-visual resources.
5. The contracted undergraduate teaching from the affiliating institutions.

This new school has several factors which may make it a model for an alternate way to produce competent physicians:

(1) Area wide use of existing physical resources.

(2) Area wide use of teaching talent.

(3) Coordinated use of teaching resources already existing in the University.

(4) No creation of patient care departments.

(5) Prolonged, intimate association with comprehensive, general care clinicians.

(6) Coordinating administrative groups representing all participating teachers.

(7) Very few tenured faculty members.

(8) Separation of undergraduate medical education from other expenses of traditional medical school-medical center.

(9) No obligation for patient care or medical service.

The academic appointments for this new school fall into categories:

1. A very small cadre of tenured, regular appointments.
2. A larger group of faculty who are already members of the University in existing schools: Dentistry, Pharmacy, Arts and Sciences, et cetera. These individuals will be given additional appointments as “Lecturers, School of Medicine.”
3. A group of Docents, eventually totaling 32, who will be on the staff at Kansas City General Hospital and who will devote essentially half of their time to medical student teaching. The University will pay one-half of their contracted salary. These would be non-regular, non-tenured appointments.
4. A very large group of community physicians, health professionals and related personnel, engaged in varying degrees of medical student teaching. These individuals will all be non-regular, non-tenured teachers with appointment levels varying from Lecturer to Clinical Professor. The majority of these individuals will be on the staffs of the affiliating institutions.