Calling on Gov. Newsom: Spend $1 billion to create a medical school in the Valley

When the words “Code Blue” are shouted over a hospital intercom, it means help is needed now.

There is a “Code Blue” alarm blaring across the San Joaquin Valley. If we don’t respond, people will suffer and lives will be lost.

COVID-19 didn’t cause this “Code Blue,” but the pandemic has dramatically exposed our lack of medical facilities and resources. We don’t have enough doctors, nurses, therapists or specialists; we lack hospital beds and even basic necessities.

The Valley’s problems are more systemic than pandemic, but just as deadly. Without a concrete plan, the lives of 4 million-plus Valley residents are in jeopardy. If allowed to fester, this lack of health care can only become more deadly and more costly.

A study conducted at my request found that there are only 157 doctors per 100,000 residents across our Valley, compared to 411 in San Francisco. In Merced County, it’s worse, just 91 doctors per 100,000. We have similar shortages of registered nurses, nurse practitioners, mental-health specialists, midwives and therapists of all kinds.

Such shortages have real consequences. The state rushed 350 emergency field hospital beds to Fresno as part of its coronavirus response. But Fresno gave up 100 of those beds because there weren’t enough doctors and nurses to staff them.

When 10 clinicians tested positive for the coronavirus in Los Banos, their illness incapacitated the largest health-care facility in a city of 40,000. Only days before that happened, we learned Golden Valley Health Care, which operates 42 clinics across the northern San Joaquin Valley, would lay off 75 staffers. Meanwhile, assisted living facilitiesfrom Visalia to Turlock have become COVID-19 hotspots.

Long before COVID-19 became a concern, I convened the San Joaquin Valley Medical Education Coalition, a group of dedicated health-care professionals, administrators and researchers whose goal is to develop more and better care for the Valley. We started with this proven premise: the best indicator of where doctors and nurses will practice medicine is the location of their medical schools.

A February study by the Legislative Analyst Office showed 12,700 medical-school students training within 60 miles of Los Angeles, but not one from Madera to San Joaquin counties.

In the entire San Joaquin Valley, we have a single satellite medical-school campus in Fresno — and it’s not living up to its expectations, writes the Legislative Analyst’s Office. In the 45 years since its first funding, it is training eight doctors per year — not the 48 originally envisioned.

Earlier this year, the California Primary Care Association and I linked arms to develop a $100 million fund that will forgive medical-school loans and create residency programs for young doctors willing to stay in the Valley. Many will be our own kids; young people who know the Valley’s vast needs first-hand.

The Assemi family has established California Health Sciences University in Clovis; it is scheduled to accept its first cohort of medical students this fall. As wonderful as that is, it won’t be nearly enough.

Better health-care infrastructure is essential. The journalists at CalMatters reported that some 5,600 virtual doctor visits occurred across the state’s 1,300 clinics in a single week in April.

But what if you don’t have a computer? What if your internet is so slow that images lag or get lost in real time? We need more and better telemedicine facilities. Such visits can’t replace a doctor or nurse, but they can speed diagnosis and separate cases that can wait from those that can’t.

Instead of being frightened by this “Code Blue,” we need a Blue New Deal to develop the Valley’s medical infrastructure, resources, expertise and resiliency. We need a medical school — not satellite campuses, but a facility that will attract young doctors, health-care professionals, researchers and myriad support services.

I am calling on Gov. Newsom to help create jobs while creating these doctors; I’m asking that he dedicate $1 billion to creating the health-care structures our Valley and state so desperately need. Give us our medical school and we’ll give you the doctors to treat the next pandemic.

Enduring solutions like the establishment of the Valley’s UC medical school should be the legacy of this pandemic, not one of its victims.

This story was originally published May 8, 2020 at 1:39 PM with the headline "Calling on Gov. Newsom: Spend $1 billion to create a medical school in the Valley."