Jul. 27—The University of New Mexico plans to significantly grow its medical school in the next 10 years, a move aimed at alleviating the state’s physician shortage.
The planned $600 million expansion would add a new on-campus facility, along with hundreds of hospital beds and staff positions.
University officials told the Legislative Finance Committee in Albuquerque on Tuesday the school plans to nearly double the number of students studying to become doctors and other health care professionals like physician assistants and physical therapists, adding an estimated 54 doctors a year to New Mexico’s workforce, according to an LFC report.
“We won’t close this gap just by education,” UNM Executive Vice President of Health Sciences Dr. Mike Richards told legislators. “We will have to have that as one of our primary strategies, but we’ll need to layer in other kinds of techniques to grow that workforce for our state.”
UNM has the state’s largest medical school and the only program issuing medical degrees. Though almost all UNM School of Medicine students are originally from New Mexico, the majority will leave the state to practice medicine after completing their training, according to the LFC report.
New Mexico ranks 32nd in the country for physicians per capita, and every county in the state, except the smallest, Los Alamos, has been federally designated a health professional shortage area, according to the Texas-based think tank Cicero Institute.
The state has also struggled for years to retain its workforce. Roughly 30% of primary care doctors either left the state, retired or stopped practicing from 2017 to 2021, according to the nonprofit think tank Think New Mexico.
Around half of New Mexico’s family physicians are age 55 or older and will retire in the next 10 years, per a report from the Robert Graham Center, a health care policy research organization based in Washington, D.C.
New Mexico has around 30% fewer medical students per capita than the national average, according to a university report.
To accommodate more students, UNM will construct a new building to replace the School of Medicine’s main facility, Reginald Heber Fitz Hall, which was built in 1967. Officials said the new building will be completed by 2030.
“We’re really not able to start growing the medical school class until we actually get a new, contemporary facility,” Richards said.
The state Legislature appropriated $30 million for the new School of Medicine, and the rest of the funding will come from a mix of state support, philanthropy and UNM capital funding, said UNM Health Sciences spokesperson Chris Ramirez.
The document projects the expansion will grow enrollment at the medical school — including health provider programs, medical students and residents — from 1,108 students in fiscal year 2026 to 2,191 by fiscal year 2035.
UNM graduates who stay to complete their residency at the university are around twice as likely to stay in New Mexico to practice medicine, according to university data.
Nationwide, about 54% of medical students stay in the same state where they completed residency training to practice, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges. The number of residents who stay in New Mexico after training is about 5% lower.
Students matched with residency programs using an algorithm that considers both applicant and program preferences.
“With these variables at play, we don’t have much control over who exactly will match into our residency slots,” Ramirez said.
Over the next decade, UNM will also expand patient care, adding doctors, staff and an additional 265 inpatient hospital beds, which will create an additional 200 residency and fellowship spots, according to the LFC report.
The additional faculty and staff for the expanded School of Medicine would increase the total operating costs for the School of Medicine from $724 million to roughly $1 billion, the report said. Revenue at the school is projected to increase from $734 million to around $964 million, officials said.