U of M Med School shifts Duluth to 4-year program, explores new campus

DULUTH — There’s just one medical school campus in Northern Minnesota.

The University of Minnesota Medical School’s Duluth campus was founded 52 years ago with the mission to serve the needs of rural Minnesota and Native American communities.

That mission has largely succeeded, with 44% of alumni practicing in rural areas and the second-highest number of Indigenous graduates in the country, according to the U of M.

In October, the university announced the Duluth campus would shift to a four-year program beginning next fall. Previously, students would do their first two years of classroom study in Duluth before transferring to the Twin Cities for their third and fourth years to finish their clinical training.

Kevin Diebel, regional dean of the Duluth campus, said the school recruits students who want to practice in rural and Native communities, and this is an opportunity to see them from start to finish.

“Which I think really helps us be a lot more intentional in our recruitment and training and hopefully our retention of these students to help focus to deliver health care in Duluth and the region after they’re done with the program,” Diebel told KAXE.

He said studies show that after graduating, medical students tend to remain where they did their training.

One reason is that students start to feel at home with the medical infrastructure around them, said Dr. Lisa Seeber, a family medicine physician at Essentia Health-Virginia.

Megan Buffington

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KAXE

“You meet your consultants; you meet the people who you’re going to refer to if you’re a primary care physician or even if you’re a specialist," she explained.

"You’re going to refer to the people in the area, and you get to know them, and you learn their practice style, and you get very comfortable with them. And that’s what we like, we like to know the people we refer to.”

Expanding to a four-year program in Duluth means finding more places for medical students to train. Right now, about 10 are able to stay in Duluth and get their required hours at hospitals there. Diebel said the plan is to expand that to 30.

The plan is to add 10 to 15 students to the Rural Physician Associate Program, which places third-year medical students in rural communities across the state for nine months. Diebel said a lot of those placements are in Northern Minnesota.

Seeber’s seen how the program can lead to practicing where you trained. A student she worked with in the program will be working at the hospital in Cook after she graduates.

Coinciding with the four-year switch is a renewed push for a new campus in Duluth’s medical district.

Diebel said the current building on the UMD campus is nearly 50 years old and starting to show its age, both in terms of maintenance and adapting to changes in education. The idea of a new campus started in 2018 with the former dean.

“We're thinking about — if we’re going to continue on as being a research and education hub for the medical school up here in Duluth — it might be time to consider new facilities," Diebel said.

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University of Minnesota

"At the same time, we also increased our class size right around that time from 60 students to 65, and we definitely maxed out the usage of our larger teaching spaces.”

Planning for the project was underway when the COVID-19 pandemic began, which pushed it to the back burner.

But the city’s major health care providers, Essentia Health and Aspirus St. Luke’s, have continued advocating for the new campus, and momentum began again in 2022.

“We’re looking at putting a building project down in the Duluth medical district, and we’re trying to be able to locate it in a place where the College of Pharmacy and the School of Medicine can be in the same building," Diebel said.

"Aspirationally, we’d love to have research, education, clinical trials work, stronger partnerships with our health systems in Duluth all be some outcomes as part of this project as well.”

Support for the project has begun to bubble up again in the lead up to the 2025 legislative session. The Duluth City Council and St. Louis County Board both passed resolutions supporting the project, and it's gotten interest from local legislators. The Range Association of Municipalities and Schools made it a legislative priority, and Essentia Health publicly commended the organization for its support.

A news release from Essentia said 19 U of M students were placed at Essentia facilities on the Iron Range this year, which the organization said is important given a shortage of rural 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,” the release stated.

“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.”

Diebel said the first step toward the new campus is getting pre-construction funds for things like architectural drawings, securing land and preparing the infrastructure. Typically, the university covers a third of the cost, with the state covering the rest.

He said in 2022, the university asked for $12 million. It did not get funding then or the next year, and it didn’t ask in 2024.

The university has moved the project to its 2026 request list. But Diebel said in the meantime, it's not like everyone in Duluth is just holding their breath waiting for action.

“Our new mayor and a lot of other private developers are looking at the medical district as an opportunity for new housing, new restaurants, new business going into Duluth, and a lot of people know that the medical school has been looking at the medical district for a long time,” he said.

Essentia’s Dr. Seeber said action by the Legislature doesn’t just move the project financially.

“Legislative support shows the people in Northern Minnesota that they are supporting us and that they are interested in our health care and they want to make sure that our rural neighbors have health care,” she said.