Signed agreement will help Samaritan lock up financing

By BENNETT HALL

Gazette-Times reporter

Western University of Health Sciences has signed a 20-year lease with Samaritan Health Services to operate a medical school in Lebanon.

The agreement paves the way for Samaritan to line up financing for the project, which is slated to break ground this summer.

"Getting the lease document completed was the final stage to getting financing," said Larry Mullins, president and CEO of Samaritan Health Services. "This was a critical factor."

Samaritan will build and own the 55,000-square-foot medical school building. The $15 million project will be funded by a bank loan, with the lease serving as security, Mullins said.

The new medical school, to be called the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific Northwest, is scheduled to open in August 2011 with an initial class of 75 students. Enrollment is expected to grow to 400 by 2014.

Western University operates the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific in Pomona, Calif., and for several years has been sending medical students to the mid-valley to do clinical rotations in Samaritan's network of five hospitals. Samaritan also has been expanding its residency programs.

The College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific Northwest - COMP Northwest, for short - is the first of several buildings envisioned for the 51-acre campus in Lebanon.

Plans call for courses of study in other health care disciplines, possibly including nursing and physical therapy. Some instructional programs might be developed by Western University, which is expanding from five to nine degree programs at its Pomona campus, while others might be taught by Linn-Benton Community College or Legacy Health Systems.

COMP Northwest, on track to become Oregon's first new medical school in more than a century, is being built at a time of looming physician shortages, especially in rural areas such as the mid-valley.

Samaritan officials hope many of the osteopaths coming out of the new medical school will choose to stay in the area after graduation.

"There is a strong link between where physicians do their training and where they end up practicing medicine, so we believe these steps will greatly strengthen our ability to recruit and retain outstanding physicians to the area," Mullins said in a statement announcing the lease.

"Most of the medical students here now are from the Pacific Northwest, and they encouraged us to establish residency programs so they can stay in this area after medical school."

Bennett Hall can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.