Updated: Tuesday, January 21 2014, 06:29 PM CST

University Medical Center Brackenridge is a giant step closer to have a medical school to go with it. Today the school -- the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas--announced its first dean.

A lot of people worked behind the scenes to bring neurologist Dr. Clay Johnston from San Francisco to be the first dean of UT's new medical school. But Dr. Johnston knows he wouldn't be here without the blessing of local voters.

He says, "To imagine that in the middle of a recession that the citizens of a city would agree to increase their property tax. I can tell you it wouldn't happen in San Francisco."

In 2012, Travis County voters approved hiking the tax rate for Central Health-- the county hospital district-- in order to commit $35 million a year to support the medical school.

The school and its teaching hospital are all part of a grander plan to convert health care delivery in Austin to a team effort to address new economic realities including the Affordable Care Act.

Clarke Heidrick, a board member for Central Health says, "The way medicine is going to be played in the 21st century: nurses, pharmacists, social workers, the whole team that's going to have to take care of the population, certainly the population that Central Health serves."

And with all these changes also come opportunities. UT nursing students see jobs in their future. Olivia Tristan says, "I think we're going to be graduating right when it's opening. So hopefully we can slide in there and have a life-long career there, too."

The next milestone for the new medical school will be the groundbreaking ceremony for its new facilities. That's expected to come sometime in March.

By Fred Cantu

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UT Names Dean For New Medical School

Published on January 21, 2014 at 1:11 am Last update on January 21, 2014 at 1:11 pm

After a nine-month search by a committee including educators, health professionals and students, the University introduced Clay Johnston as the inaugural dean of the Dell Medical School on Tuesday morning.

Johnston, who studied at Amherst University, Harvard University and the University of CaliforniaBerkeley, is currently the associate vice chancellor of research and director of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at the University of CaliforniaSan Francisco School of Medicine. He will begin serving as dean March 1.

The Dell Medical School, which went into planning in 2012 and was named last year, is in the final states of design and is expected to receive its first class of students in 2016. President William Powers, Jr. said Johnston was selected in part because of his forward-thinking vision for the school.

We had a dozen fantastic people from around the country, Powers said. This really garnered a great deal of interest from some very high level people. [Johnston] is innovative and open and wants to help design a medical school in a new way. He is very interested in new forms of health care delivery, and he has worked and proven himself in the institute that he heads up in his ability to work with many stakeholders in a complex situation.

Johnston said he will try to use his role as dean to advance the way medical schools approach health care, which he believes should be more patient-centric.

I think medical health care is really at an important juncture right now, Johnston said. My vision is to create a medical school that really represents where health care should be going, not where its been. Thats the beauty of starting from the ground up and then being able to take a look at how health care is working, how medical centers are working and design them for the next century.

Unlike the six existing medical institutions within the UT System, which each have their own president, Powers said Dell Medical School will be a unit of the University.

Johnston, who plans to continue treating patients as dean, said all individuals involved in the Dell Medical School project have different expectations for his performance. He said he will be expected to deliver excellent care to patients, create multidisciplinary programs intended to advocate research and turn the school and research hospital into modes for economic development in the community. Johnston said one of the first challenges he faces will be prioritizing these objectives.

The school is going to do all of those things, but when? Johnston said. You cant do all of those things from day one or year one or even year five. So the biggest challenge is prioritizing amongst these critical goals and making excellent progress in all of these areas but managing the expectations so that people understand that it is impossible to grow this thing, even in five years, to the vision that all of us have for it.

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University appoints Clay Johnston as inaugural dean of Dell Medical School

BOISE - Not only does Idaho rank 49th in the nation for its number of doctors per capita, many of the states current doctors are expected to retire in the next few years, and the state, which has no medical school, is lagging on training new ones. Knowing that it can take up to 11 years after high school to produce a physician, Idaho really has some challenges ahead as these physicians start retiring, Dr. Mary Barinaga warned state lawmakers on Tuesday. That includes four years of college, four years of medical school, and three to seven years of residency

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BOISE - Not only does Idaho rank 49th in the nation for its number of doctors per capita, many of the states current doctors are expected to retire in the next few years, and the state, which has no medical school, is lagging on training new ones.

Knowing that it can take up to 11 years after high school to produce a physician, Idaho really has some challenges ahead as these physicians start retiring, Dr. Mary Barinaga warned state lawmakers on Tuesday. That includes four years of college, four years of medical school, and three to seven years of residency and fellowship.

A new family medical residency training program in Coeur dAlene is one step to try to help, joining other residency programs around the state; it would train six students next year. Lawmakers also are debating adding more medical school seats through a cooperative program that sends Idaho med students to the University of Washington, though Gov. Butch Otters proposed budget for next year doesnt fund more seats.

Dr. Dick McLandress, program director for the new Kootenai Family Medicine Residency in Coeur dAlene, said the need is particularly acute for primary-care doctors, with 50 percent expected to retire within the next five to seven years. In North Idaho, definitely were in the 50 percent zone, he said. That really matters to all of our communities.

Sen. Dan Schmidt, D-Moscow, a family physician himself, agreed. I know a lot of em, and theyre my age and older, said Schmidt, 59.

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Idaho's doctor shortage threatens to worsen - Tue, 21 Jan 2014 PST