Dr. Stephen Spann is the founding dean of the University of Houston College of Medicine.
A local public university has partnered with a national health insurance company to advance public health and the school’s health care courses.
Louisville, Kentucky-based Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) will donate $15 million over 10 years to create the Humana Integrated Health System Sciences Institute at the University of Houston, which will include the colleges of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, social work and optometry, according to a press release. The donation will fund endowed chairs for the five colleges as well as assist with the multimillion-dollar startup and operational costs for the upcoming medical school.
Through the long-term partnership, Humana will have the opportunity to place employees as adjunct professors, influence health care curricula and establish clinic labs at the university, per the release. The entities can partner together on research, publications, internships and other experience-based learning programs.
Per the release, the collaboration is meant to improve health outcomes and expand “value-based” payment models. It also aims to build a talent pipeline of health care professionals trained in population health, which looks at the variables that influence individuals’ health that then affect the health of a group or population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In particular, UH’s medical school is expected to focused on primary care in underserved communities. The university hopes that at least half of each graduating class will specialize in primary care.
“We have a commitment to the underserved in Houston, in Texas, and beyond,” Steve Spann, founding dean of the UH College of Medicine, said in the press release. “Training our students in and exposing them to real-world practices in population health, clinical quality and new payment models will provide them with a tremendous opportunity to improve the health of our community.”
This partnership also assists Humana in its commitment of “improving the health of the communities it serves 20 percent by 2020,” per the release.
The University of Houston College of Medicine will temporarily be located inside the Health 2, formerly the Health and Biomedical Sciences Building II, at 4849 Calhoun Road. The space will serve as a home for the college for three planning years and the first two years of enrollment, a spokesperson… more
Courtesy University of Houston
The health insurance giant company had nearly $54 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2017, according to research from Houston Business Journal sister paper Louisville Business First. In Texas, Humana has about 2,800 employees and more than 1.8 million medical members, per the release.
Humana’s $15 million donation will also be put toward UH’s $1 billion “Here, We Go” campaign, which funds campus-wide projects, per the release. In January 2017, university officials said they aimed to apply a significant portion of the campaign toward big-ticket items like a medical school. The campaign has received $905.6 million from more than 154,000 donors as of Aug. 27, per UH’s website.
To fund the medical school’s roughly $120 million, 10-year startup phase, UH plans to seek one-third of the funds from state appropriations, one-third from philanthropy and one-third from intellectual property revenue. Currently, the UH College of Medicine has raised $31.1 million of its goal of $40 million from private support, according to its website.
A spokesperson confirmed that Humana's gift will go toward the College of Medicine's private support fund, which is part of the larger "Here, We Go" campaign.
The UH System’s board of regents approved establishing the UH College of Medicine in November with a plan to admit the first class of 30 students in 2020. The school recently received an anonymous $3 million gift to cover the tuition of the inaugural class.
The university currently is seeking medical degree approval from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education. It’s also finalizing a partnership with HCA Healthcare's Gulf Coast Division to bring 103 first-year resident positions to the Houston area by 2020, with a total of 309 by 2024.