The Lewis Katz School of Medicine and WellSpan Health, a health system located in South Central Pennsylvania and Maryland, have signed a memorandum of understanding to open up a new regional campus and hospital in York County, Pennsylvania.
The agreement, which declares the intention to begin working toward a legal contract, will add another regional campus onto Temple’s medical school, which currently includes the main Health Sciences campus in North Philadelphia and St. Luke’s University Health Network in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
The medical school campus is proposed to be in a WellSpan building located on Whiteford Road in York County. The campus will employ roughly 100 faculty from the Lewis Katz School of Medicine and admit 40 students. Its first class will open in August 2027 with a graduation date of May 2031, according to Wellspan.
“[WellSpan] was interested in starting up a regional campus, and we saw it as a great opportunity to partner with them because of their expansive health network and the opportunity for our medical students to have more opportunities for various clinical rotations,” said Denise Salerno, associate dean of undergraduate medical education.
Wellspan has rotational programs tailored for students studying to enter a number of fields in the healthcare profession, like physicians or dentists. They have been expanding their resources into the education of future professionals, having opened a similar school of nursing in York County with Jersey College in August. The aim of these two affiliations is to identify and address local shortages.
“Our teams have been proactive in addressing a serious shortage of healthcare professionals here in central Pennsylvania and all across the country and this partnership with Temple is another important step,” a WellSpan spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Temple News. “Offering a medical school campus environment at WellSpan enhances our ability to advance system clinical and quality initiatives, and more readily collaborate with healthcare or aligned industries around new innovations and strategies.”
WellSpan York Hospital, the hospital that will be built alongside the new campus, will provide a clinical site for students where they will be able to gain experience throughout the duration of their education. The opening of the campus will tackle the limited number of healthcare professionals in central Pennsylvania. It will also provide students with a different rotational experience than one they would obtain at Lewis Katz or St. Luke’s, Salerno said.
Students from Temple’s Main Campus and regional campuses will be able to transfer as necessary to enhance their knowledge and training throughout their four years.
“There is this balance in modern healthcare about urban care delivery versus rural care delivery,” said Shums Lareef, a first year medical student at Lewis Katz Medical School. “Temple Main within Philadelphia, even their satellite locations within Philadelphia, do an excellent job of caring for the definition of urban healthcare. The partnerships within St. Luke’s, and now I’m hearing York County, are a great way for students to bridge that gap between rural healthcare and urban healthcare.”
Lareef, who has shadowed physicians at Temple’s Fox Chase Cancer Center and at an orthopedic surgery clinic, believes programs like the one coming to York County are essential in understanding healthcare in America. It can help medical students adjust before they are thrust into the residency cycle at any hospital in America, he said.
“The residency cycle could take you anywhere,” Lareef said. “It could take you into the Midwest of the United States, where there is not a hospital within the 300-400 mile radius. Or it could take you to a place like Philadelphia, New York, Boston, DC, where you flip a coin and walk a quarter mile in any direction and be met with an amazing hospital system.”
More than 46 million Americans live in rural areas. A lack of access to healthcare can contribute to higher risk of death than those who live in urban areas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
University programs can help provide both residents with accessible healthcare and students with more opportunities to gain experience before they begin their residency.
“This whole opportunity is a nice way for us to partner with WellSpan in an educational way to complement what we offer,” Salerno said. “WellSpan really has a quite extensive healthcare network out in York, it’s going to bring great opportunities for our students.”
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