Planning a medical school teaching hospital in an era of cost containment. The CMDNJ-Rutgers Medical School experience

Abstract

Rutgers Medical School was started in 1962 as a two year medical school. By 1976 its basic science enrollment had grown to 108 and it retained 56 students each year for clinical instruction.

During the early 1970's the medical school had been frustrated on three different occasions in its attempts to build an on-campus teaching hospital. This paper describes the school's successful post-1976 planning efforts to provide its faculty and students with the appropriate clinical facilities by a model which would generate support among external constituencies. The history of the medical school prior to 1976 is presented briefly. The paper then develops the rationale for the new planning model and shows the relationship of the model to the educational bases of the institution. It then tracks the planning process from program development through approvals by the external constituencies and brings the school's experience to the present where $62 million dollars of construction is under contract for health care delivery and medical education facilities.