Essentia Health commends RAMS for support of new medical school in downtown Duluth

Essentia Health commends the Range Association of Municipalities and Schools (RAMS) for supporting a new medical school in downtown Duluth.

At its meeting Thursday, RAMS passed a resolution noting that it "supports a newly constructed University of Minnesota Health Sciences Center, Duluth Campus to be located in downtown Duluth,” in part because the investment would “expand medical training in Duluth and continue to prioritize the training and placement of rural practitioners.”

At Essentia, we share the University of Minnesota’s passion for training Native American and rural providers and have a history of successfully placing those providers throughout northern Minnesota and tribal communities. Through the first 11 months of 2024, 19 students have been placed in our facilities on the Iron Range, with more than 2,200 hours of training. This is especially important at a time when rural America is facing a shortage of clinicians.

A recent workforce report from the Minnesota Hospital Association found that, while working physicians in the state dropped by 9% compared to the previous year, the decline is more precipitous in small towns. Indeed, one out of every three rural physicians plan to leave their profession within the next five years, according to the Minnesota Department of Health.

“We know providers are more likely to practice medicine where they do their training,” said Dr. Lisa Seeber, a family medicine physician at the Essentia Health-Virginia Clinic. “So many of the medical students in Duluth do their rotations in rural areas, including the Iron Range. Investing in a new medical school would enhance the university’s ability to recruit and retain students in Duluth, allowing us to prepare even more clinicians to care for patients in the communities we call home.”

The RAMS resolution follows the University of Minnesota’s announcement in September that it is transitioning from a two-year program to a four-year program at the medical school in Duluth.

“Health care and health care-related jobs are critical to the stability and success of communities across the Range,” said Paul Peltier, RAMS executive director. “We are encouraged by the university’s willingness to make this kind of transformative investment for Greater Minnesota.”

Essentia has two training hospitals in downtown Duluth — the new and state-of-the-art St. Mary’s Medical Center and Essentia Health-Duluth. We partner with the University of Minnesota to train close to 250 medical, nursing and health science students each year. We have 10,450 total employees in Minnesota. Presently, Essentia provides more than 70% of the total clinical rotations to the Duluth medical school. This includes 100% of the training in critical care; OB/GYN; pediatrics; hospice and palliative care; ear, nose and throat surgery; sports medicine; orthopedics; and pediatric clinical care.