Doctors propose medical center version

Dan Kulin and Christina Littlefield

Thursday, Sept. 22, 2005 | 11:15 a.m.

Clark County doctors are pitching their own version of a Las Vegas-based academic medical center, proposing a facility that would be under the control of the university system.

They propose the medical center would be built in the hospital corridor off Charleston and Rancho boulevards near University Medical Center, Valley Hospital and UNLV's Shadow Lane Biomedical Campus.

The proposal was adopted Tuesday by the Clark County Medical Society and puts in writing yet another plan for creating an academic medical center in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman is pushing for an academic medical center on a slice of the vacant 61 acres owned by the city near downtown Las Vegas. He said negotiations are still ongoing with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which has proposed to run a center if it is built here.

Goodman said the 61 acres, part of the former Union Pacific rail yards, are "the heart and soul of the entire valley," but refused to answer any questions about the latest plan, which he said he has not seen.

The doctors' plan comes on the heels of a proposal from the Nevada Hospital Association, which seeks increased spending on residencies and internships but did not call for the construction of a medical center anytime soon.

Jim Rogers, chancellor of the Higher Education System of Nevada, also said he hadn't yet seen the written recommendations from the medical society, but he said the local doctors will have to show him where the money for an academic medical center would come from as negotiations continue.

"They can talk about all sorts of different things, but the bottom line and the only thing I care about is the money," Rogers said. "Because we can't build a better medical school and/or an academic medical center with hopes and dreams. We have to have money."

Rogers said higher education officials are looking at UNLV's Shadow Lane campus, with its 17 acres, as a possible location for an academic medical center. The system is talking with Clark County officials about whether there is other available acreage in the vicinity for what Rogers said may end up being a 50- to 100-acre project.

A project that scale would make the 61 acres downtown, 20 acres of which was slotted for the academic medical center, unsuitable.

Dr. Ron Kline, Clark County Medical Society president, said city land is probably too small for an academic medical center, although he did not know how much land might be needed.

But Kline said the location his group is proposing would give such a center "more room to grow" than the city's 61 acres.

Kline also noted that there is no money set aside for any plan to build a medical center on the city's 61 acres.

Kline also said that while partnering with the Pittsburgh center might mean an academic medical center could be up and running faster, "it wouldn't be our own."

"Any profits would leave the state, and we wouldn't control it," he said.

Rogers has suggested that any partnership with the Pittsburgh center include a 50-50 split of all costs and any profits.

The doctors' proposal also calls for the academic medical center to come under the authority of a proposed president of health sciences who would report directly to the chancellor rather than to UNR, as the current University of Nevada Medical School dean does.

Rogers, who talked with some doctors Wednesday and has a meeting set up for Oct. 11 to hear a formal proposal from them, said system officials are still looking at all possible options for how to improve the school of medicine and build an academic medical center.

"I just told them (the doctors) to go back and keep working," Rogers said. "We've got a lot of frogs to kiss before we find a princess, and somewhere out there, there is one."