University of Georgia School of Medicine

Georgia faces significant challenges in addressing the healthcare needs of its citizens. Our population, which presently ranks 8th in the nation at approximately 11 million, is rapidly growing, yet we continue to have only one public medical school to serve the state’s needs. That simply isn’t enough to meet demand. Georgia currently ranks 39th in the nation for the number of active patient care physicians per capita and 41st for the number of public medical students per capita. At the same time, our population is aging, as are our physicians, with about one-third nearing retirement age.

Georgia needs to expand the pipeline of both medical education and graduate medical education, and the UGA School of Medicine will do both. Georgia does very well in retaining medical students who complete residency training in the state. An independent medical school at UGA will increase residency opportunities through new partnerships with area hospital systems and, therefore, increase the number of doctors retained in the state.

UGA is in the process of laying the foundation to further develop the Health Sciences Campus. Currently, the UGA School of Medicine has applied for accreditation and has been recognized as having Candidate Status by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME). However, UGA cannot advertise or recruit for an inaugural class of students until the LCME grants “Preliminary Accreditation Status.” We will inform the public via this website when changes in our accreditation status occur.

Once UGA officially welcomes the first class of School of Medicine students, the university will become an independent medical school. However, students in years 2-4 of medical school who are enrolled in the Medical Partnership at the time will remain students in the Medical College of Georgia at the Athens campus. The official Medical Partnership will end after the last class of Medical Partnership students graduates.

The $50M investment from the state will be matched with $50M in private resources to build a new medical education and research facility. The facility will allow the School of Medicine to expand its class size to train even more doctors for Georgia.