Frequently Asked Questions

  • Why Carle?

    Carle Health System is the only health system in Illinois – and one of few in the nation - that owns its own health plan and is one of the state’s largest providers of clinical care. It is a recognized leader in high quality, cost-effective and highly coordinated patient care. Its operations represent a new model for effective and efficient health care delivery, focusing on the patient and incorporating teaching and research. Its patient volume is well within the range of the University of Chicago’s (U of C) hospital, for example. In fact, U. of C. accepts approximately 90 students per year, compared with the planned 25 to 50 for the new college. Remarkably strong financially, Carle’s five-year plan calls for a net addition of 130 to 150 new physicians, many of whom will be specifically hired with this College in mind. The proposed partnership would allow Carle to rapidly advance care delivery through programmatic changes and early adoption of technology and research.

  • How will the College of Medicine operate?

    The College of Medicine will be governed by the University Statutes and operate as a college of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It will require full coordination and a strong partnership with Carle to be successful. The dean also will act as chief academic officer at Carle, and a joint liaison committee will be established y the university and Carle to ensure the college stays aligned with its vision and operates in the most effective manner as possible.

  • What will the partnership between the University and Carle bring to each?

    The new college will be uniquely positioned to transform health care delivery and outcomes for patients and the population at large. It will further Carle’s mission of serving people through high-quality care, medical research and education and will allow the campus to offer a high-impact, academic-physician training program addressing current and future health needs of society. The University will be able to meets its mission and goals of education and economic development far more effectively than it would be able to otherwise.

  • How will University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) benefit?

    Increasing the number of biomedical-oriented faculty at Illinois with deep expertise in bioengineering, computer science, material science and electrical engineering will lead to more collaborations between the faculty at UIC (e.g. pharmaceutical sciences, robotic surgery) and Urbana. Having the new College of Medicine at Urbana will allow us to collaborate more effectively on large centers and initiatives.

  • Since you have successful partnerships with top medical researchers, why can’t you stay within the current structure?

    To achieve our goals, we need more than remote partnerships. A new separately accredited College of Medicine will maximize our ability to meet our economic development mission. We can dedicate ourselves to transforming medical education without the challenges of having a third party with different priorities and a totally different core mission. With 150 miles of separation between Urbana and UIC, we cannot fully realize the intense and active environment needed for highly collaborative and interdisciplinary ducation and research that is necessary for new discoveries and innovation. We plan to continue and strengthen our strategic partnerships with Mayo Clinic in Individualized medicine and with OSF Hospital in Peoria, Illinois. in the area of clinical simulation and the formation of the new medical school at Urbana will only make these partnerships stronger as we increase the number of biomedical-focused faculty and researchers at Urbana.

  • How will Urbana-Champaign benefit?

    People in the region will have access to better care. More biotech and medically-oriented companies will locate here, spurring additional grow in transportation, schools, recreation, entertainment and other quality of life measures. Urbana-Champaign and the region also will see the economic benefit this will bring to the rest of the state.

  • How will this benefit central Illinois, Chicago and Illinois?

    The state government is focused on increasing economic development throughout the state. The total economic impact of the proposed new College of Medicine enterprise on the state of Illinois is expected to exceed $1 billion annually by 2035, sustaining more than 7,600 jobs statewide by 2035. Economic benefits of the new College of Medicine will accrue from the spending by the new college, Carle Health System and related research institutes on everything from capital improvements to goods and services, as well as spending by staff, faculty, medical trainees and visitors to the College. The economic development benefits generated in central Illinois as a result of the new College of Medicine will include the addition of thousands of highly paid professional and support jobs, newly constructed neighborhoods and schools to serve the anticipated increase in families relocating to the region, communities championing the expansion of dedicated education, greater choices for entertainment and recreation, and improved transportation from Urbana-Champaign to Chicago as well as the east and west coasts. In addition to the construction of new homes and schools to support projected population increases, we project new retail, banking and commercial opportunities will serve as additional economic benefits for the region.

  • How are you going to finance it?

    A detailed budget plan has been prepared and presented. The two most important financial elements are a $100 million commitment over 10 years from Carle and another $135 million that will be secured through fundraising. Other sources of revenue include student tuition and fees, clinical revenues, research revenues and an additional ongoing contribution from Carle.

  • What are the next steps?

    Carle and the University are working on the definitive agreements for the College. Also, we are seeking approval to start the College from the Illinois Board of Higher Education. Once the College is created, we will search for the founding dean and initial faculty. As mandated by our University Statutes, those faculty will lead the development of bylaws and curricula. The latter will be reviewed and approved by the Urbana Academic Senate. Accreditation will be sought from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME).

  • What will happen to the current COM on our campus?

    UIC is understandably proud of the College of Medicine programs its regional campus offers in Urbana. Our plans have been developed based on the assumption that the programs of the current UIC College of Medicine will continue to be delivered as they are now. However, should UIC decide that it wishes to change the medical programs, we will be glad to have these discussions with them.

  • Will new state general revenue funds or funding currently going to programs in other colleges be required to support this effort on our campus?

    We will not request any new state general funds for the new College of Medicine. After a thorough and detailed analysis, the Senate Budget Committee concluded, “The financial plan for the proposed college is: (1) thorough in identifying projected expense items and potential sources of revenue for the proposed new College of Medicine, (2) consistent with commitments made to (i) not request any new General Revenue Funds be directed to the operation of the new College of Medicine, and (ii) not require the diversion of resources from other colleges, and (3) provides for reasonable and sufficient revenues and investments to address the expenses that can be anticipated for the College.”

  • How does the budget situation affect the planning?

    With Carle’s support, we will move forward with confidence independent of the state of Illinois’ fiscal situation. Carle has AAA credit rating, an extremely strong financial rating. The window for being the first to implement this transformative curriculum and thus gain first mover advantage is small. Others have become aware of our ideas and already are discussing following us. The College will have a lasting positive impact for generations to come. There is no better opportunity than now – when support of key stakeholders is aligned – to create the first research-intensive College of Medicine in the world that is created to focus expressly at the intersection of engineering, technology and big data with health care.

  • How well as this been vetted by the faculty?

    The Academic Senate voted to recommend establishment of the College of Medicine after three respected Senate committees, as well as teams of professionals at the University and Carle, vetted details reports. All three committees: the Budget Committee, the Committee on University Statutes and Senate Procedures and the Education Policy Committee endorsed the creation of the College.

  • Are you sure you have enough money to succeed?

    The Budget Committee, after reviewing various risk scenarios concludes that, “Even under adverse conditions, including multiple negative shocks, COM’s basic finances remain sound. This is due largely to the fact that Carle’s contribution to the venture, equal to about a third of projected expenses over the 10-year planning horizon, is contractually locked in and provides a very low risk buffer against shocks to other revenue and expense items.” The budget was developed with the assistance of a former dean of a College of Medicine and is at the upper bound of what the LCME expects for a new college of medicine. We are thus very confident that we will have the financial resources necessary to succeed. Additionally, the LCME requires that a college prove strong financial viability before the LCME grants accreditation. By definition, this means the College of Medicine will not move forward until funds are in place that secure viability.

  • How do you know you can achieve your fundraising goals?

    The two senior representatives from Illinois who developed the fundraising plan have more than 50 years of fundraising experience between them. One of them, the vice chancellor for institutional advancement, was the assistant vice president for development at the University of Washington School of Medicine from 2006-2008 at a time when the school successfully completed a $1 billion campaign. Gift contributions at Urbana have exceeded $140 million per year over the past four years, and the new College’s annual fundraising goals are a small fraction of those amounts.

    Additionally, the Urbana campus has documented capacity for increased gift giving. Fundraising data for schools of medicine show the average raised last year among 81 public programs was $38.5 million per school. Carle is committed to partnering with the University on fundraising activities and major gift giving – two hallmarks of successful launches of recent schools.

  • You aren’t in a big metropolitan area. Is that a problem?

    Many successful schools of medicine are located outside of large metropolitan areas. In turn, these have led to the creation of medical centers that have become central to the economic prosperity of their communities and surrounding counties. Carle has robust patient volume, as well as levels of medical activity similar to hospitals associated with very highly ranked medical schools, including the University of Chicago.

  • What are you proposing?

    We propose to establish the first College of Medicine in the world that will focus at the intersection of engineering, technology and big data with health care. Our college will revolutionize medical education and biomedical research. We will train a new generation of physician-engineers, physician-discoverers, physician- inventors, physician-scientists and practicing physicians who help deliver better health care to more people at a lower cost.

  • Why now?

    One of society’s greatest challenges is to provide more people across the globe with greater access to better health care at lower cost. The U.S. health care system is undergoing historic changes driven by an aging population with more chronic conditions, an influx of millions of new people into the healthcare system due to the Affordable Care Act and a severe physician shortage.

    The window of opportunity to be leaders in this arena will not last long. We must act now, since other institutions also are attempting to bring together engineering and medicine. Our advantage is that we can leverage our unique, deep and broad strengths in engineering and integrate them with the medical enterprise. Indeed, we have the opportunity to design a new paradigm for medical education and research from the ground up.

  • Why the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign?

    Our campus already has the assets, including one of the nation’s top engineering schools and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Each of the top 10 medical schools in the country already partners with faculty members conducting research at the Urbana campus in the College of Engineering and the computer science and genomics programs. Yet, the university does not have its own medical college on campus to be able to take more complete advantage of these opportunities. A new medical college would greatly improve our competitiveness to secure funding from multiple sources (e.g. National Institute of Health, Department of Defense, DARPA, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Carver Foundation).

    The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is uniquely positioned to leverage our strengths in engineering, technology and big data and apply these to health care. We will take advantage of this position to become the leader in the convergence of engineering with medicine through our bold, visionary and timely College of Medicine. Advances in engineering, technology and big data are driving medical breakthroughs. For example, miniaturized imaging technology, pervasive sensors, advanced robots, inexpensive genomic sequencing, minimally invasive surgical procedures and remote monitoring of multiple physiological indices of health or illness in real time and over time are just a few of the discoveries that have fundamentally changed health care. We are leading these advancements and would integrate them into the medical curriculum of the future to produce the physician-leaders of tomorrow who will further drive the much-needed change to address the grand health care challenges faced by the U.S. and the world.