FAMU is reassessing the estimated $42M price tag for its proposed College of Dental Medicine building in light of a generous offer from Tallahassee Memorial Hospital (TMH). TMH wants to house the dental school and help raise money for the facility.Howard Bailit, FAMU’s dental school consultant, announced the news during the university’s presentation before the Strategic Planning Committee of the Florida Board of Governors (BOG) on September 14.
“We’ve had a very interesting offer from Tallahassee Memorial Hospital,” Bailit said. “They had donated land to us. But now they’re saying, ‘Why don’t you locate your dental school right on our medical campus?’”
Bailit said that FAMU has not had time to fully examine this new option. But he thinks the potential arrangement could provide numerous benefits to FAMU’s future program.
“They have a first rate medical campus there," Bailit said. "And they will help us raise the money for this facility.”
He added that TMH is also in a strong position to help FAMU establish its dental educational delivery system in the Florida Panhandle. FAMU plans to partner with county governments across the region to expand their community-based dental operatories. According to FAMU’s proposal, FAMU dental “faculty, residents, and senior dental students will provide care in these clinics, greatly increasing their capacity to care for low-income patients.” This will open the way for 100,000 new patients to receive care.
“Tallahassee Memorial Hospital has developed a medical management company,” Bailit explained. “This medical management company manages its own clinics and also manages clinics on a contractual basis for other community clinics that are out there. They could go a long way in helping us develop the skills and capability for managing our operation.”
The BOG will revisit the dental education proposals from FAMU, the University of Florida, and the University of Central Florida in November. Bailit says FAMU will use that time to fully evaluate TMH’s offer.
“I think we need a couple months to see whether the capital costs for the building are going to stay the same or be less based on this potential arrangement with Tallahassee Memorial Hospital,” Bailit said.
Even though FAMU had originally planned to place the dental school on its main campus, universities often find it beneficial to establish medical campuses next to hospitals.
For example, the Harvard School of Dental Medicine is not located on the university’s main campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It, along with the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, is part of the Longwood Medical and Academic Area in Boston. That gives it close proximity to treatment centers such as Children’s Hospital Boston and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which it uses as teaching affiliates.