GOOD HEALTH

For years, Charlotte has been one of the largest American cities that lacked a four-year medical school. The health care professionals who finally made it happen overcame a series of setbacks, false starts, and failures, and they plan to use their clean slate to create a new kind of community asset

- GREG LACOUR

CHARLOTTE’S FIRST four-year medical school emerged from a high-profile failure. In August 2017, Carolinas HealthCare System, Charlotte’s largest employer, and UNC Health Care announced a merger that leaders of both organizations said would transform health care in North Carolina “by creating the most comprehensive network of primary, specialty, and on-demand care in the Southeast.”

The announcement was banner news throughout the state, and in Charlotte, it raised the possibility that the city would finally land an institution that civic leaders had said for years it needed: a four-year medical school. In 2015, a Pittsburgh-based consulting firm hired by a group of Charlotte health care and business leaders concluded that, as the nation’s largest city without one, Charlotte needed a med school to meet population growth and compensate for doctor shortages through the region. The firm, Tripp Umbach, recommended a partnership between UNC Charlotte and the UNC-Chapel Hill med school’s Charlotte location, a small campus for third and fourth-year students. But the UNC system decided a partnership with Carolinas HealthCare offered better opportunities for growth throughout the state, especially in rural areas.

Between the hosannas, officials sounded a few notes of caution. The two systems still needed to work out some basic details, like how the joint operating company would function and what it would be called. “This is like a marriage,” UNC Health Care CEO Bill Roper told reporters. “What we’re describing to you today is, we just got engaged. The wedding is still several months away.”