Maine's only medical school to expand in new home
Jun. 3—Dr. Jane Carreiro gestured to several rows of student exam tables in the shiny new home of Maine's only medical school.
In that particular classroom on the third floor of the Harold and Bibby Alfond Center for Health Sciences, students will soon be role-playing as doctors and patients to learn how to conduct primary care exams.
The $90 million building — which will be showcased in a ribbon cutting ceremony on Tuesday — is the cornerstone of a strategy to grow the University of New England's Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine program, and connect it to all of the health sciences programs at the university.
By moving the medical program from the university's Biddeford campus to the sprawling, 110,000-square-foot building on its Portland campus, the DO program will grow from graduating 165 medical students per year to 200.
The first class with 200 students will start this fall and graduate in 2029 before going into their residency program. A $30 million gift from the Harold Alfond Foundation, $5 million in federal funding secured by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and other fundraising efforts made the construction of the new facility possible.
The aim is to try to get more newly minted doctors working in Maine to help ease the health care workforce shortage.
"That is our No. 1 goal," said Carreiro, vice president of health affairs at UNE and dean of the medical school. "That's what we are here for, to provide the workforce that we need for patient care in northern New England."
The total number of health care practitioners in Maine — doctors, nurses, physical therapists, physician assistants and others working to provide care — rebounded in 2024, increasing to 43,930 from a recent low of 41,110 in 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But there are continuing shortages of some providers, and demand for care is ever-increasing.
In one category of primary care, for example, the number of family physicians working in Maine declined from 710 in 2019 to 630 in 2024.
And experts say that Maine's recent population gains, plus its aging population, mean that demand for care has spiked even as the numbers of some providers has declined.
James Herbert, UNE's president, said it's not only about increasing the number of graduating doctors, but also getting them to stay here.
"Most doctors settle within the general vicinity of where they did their residencies," Herbert said. A residency is a supervised clinical training for medical school graduates, where they learn under a practicing doctor for a few years.
"We need more residencies in Maine to anchor doctors in Maine," he said.
Herbert said there is no federal money available to increase the number of residencies, so the university is supporting a bill, LD 1311, that would add $2 million in state funding to increase physician residencies in rural Maine. Herbert said the initial proposal was $5 million per year, but it's since been scaled back to $2 million to give it a better chance of passing. The bill is pending in the Maine Legislature.
Herbert said while the new building will serve DO students, it will also be used by students in the other health sciences, including nursing, dentistry, physical therapists, physician assistants and pharmacists. The different health sciences programs will work together.
Doctors of osteopathy can practice all areas of medicine similar to doctors of medicine, or MDs, and training emphasizes a "whole person" approach to diagnosis, treatment and patient care.
"The way we've traditionally done health care education is to have everything siloed — nurses do their own thing, doctors do their own thing, PAs do their own thing. They don't train together. We will be doing more interprofessional education, and learn how to work on interdisciplinary teams," Herbert said.
With all medical sciences working at the same Portland campus, having the students and faculty work together across programs will be easier to achieve.
"It's a point of pride that at the Portland campus, the University of New England will be the only university in New England where all of its health programs will be co-located on a single campus," Herbert said.
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