League @ Nite

In July 2020, Kaiser Permanente, an integrated managed care consortium, opened a medical school in Pasadena with 50 medical students in the inaugural class. There were already 192 medical schools in the United States, 15 of them in California. Why did we need another medical school, and why situate this medical school in Pasadena?

The Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine (KPSOM)—named in honor of the late CEO and chairman of Kaiser Permanente—promises to be an unusual and perhaps unique medical school. Each class will be small, with only 48–50 students. Tuition for the first five classes through 2024 is free. Average medical school tuition per year in the United States is $54,700. The free tuition opportunity brought 10,500 applicants for 50 positions in the inaugural class, resulting in an acceptance rate of less than 1 percent.

Contrary to what you might suppose, KPSOM is not training physicians to work in the Kaiser managed care environment. Senior faculty vociferously deny that that is the intent. Rather, they are training students to be high-quality caring physicians in any healthcare environment. Rotations for students are longitudinally integrated, meaning that first-year students will meet their first patients within weeks of beginning classes. Teaching emphasis will be on understanding and overcoming racial, gender, and economic disparities in healthcare delivery. The absence of medical school debt will allow graduating students to choose specialties based on the students’ true preferences rather than specialties that would allow the students to pay back their debt most easily. Feel free to ask the panelists what will happen after the five years of free tuition. It’s a good question.

During this panel discussion, you will learn why the medical school was positioned here in Pasadena. You will hear how KPSOM will interact with our community and what additional unique characteristics it brings to the Pasadena area. You will hear how the free tuition has contributed to a diverse class and allowed students to study medicine who otherwise could not afford to do so. You will listen to a first-year student describe a week in the life of a medical student.

As the panel concludes, you will have gained an understanding of how KPSOM will prepare medical students for the fair and equitable practice of medicine in the twenty-first century. There will be plenty of time for questions. Don’t miss this event—sign up now!

—Margan Zajdowicz, Co-chair, Healthcare Committee