Nixon's budget withholding jeopardizes Springfield clinic

Area educators and health care officials are unhappy about Gov. Jay Nixon’s decision to withhold some $1 billion from the state’s fiscal 2015 budget as the General Assembly’s veto session approaches, including $10 million for the Missouri University School of Medicine class expansion and Springfield clinical campus.

School partner CoxHealth released a statement saying, “Developing a Springfield medical school clinical campus to capture the brightest young medical minds in Missouri is critical for the future of health care in our community and state.”

The medical school expansion was projected to add more than $390 million annually to Missouri’s economy and create 3,500 new jobs, according to a news release.

“I have seen no other comparable proposals that would create so many jobs and have such a great economic impact for so few dollars as the medical school expansion in Springfield,” CoxHealth President and CEO Steve Edwards said in the release. “The initial studies conducted indicate that to create a medical school from scratch, the cost would likely exceed $1 billion.

“This arrangement with Mizzou is a tremendous value to our state and wonderful benefit to our region. We hope that politics are put aside, and this matter is resolved in a fashion that favors our community and our state.”

A new report from the Missouri Hospital Association found the current demand and anticipated need for primary care providers in Missouri will outstrip supply, limiting access to primary care throughout the state.

“Missouri’s primary care system is at a crossroads,” said Herb Kuhn, MHA president and CEO, in a separate release. “The state’s primary care workforce is inadequate to meet the growing demand and we’re neither producing enough primary care physicians nor reshaping the primary care delivery model fast enough to address the problem.”

Since MHA’s initial report in 2011, the number of licensed and practicing physicians in Missouri has increased overall. However, numbers have fallen in rural areas.

According to the statewide report, 40 percent of practicing physicians are older than 55, and about one-third of the nursing workforce is older than 50. MHA believes physician retirement could have a significant disruptive influence on access to health care in rural communities.

“In the two years since MHA issued the first report on the primary care workforce, limited progress has been made,” Kuhn said. “Missouri needs policies that encourage trained health care professionals to practice here and create innovative solutions to help with access to primary care services. Unfortunately, Missouri ranks second in the nation for exporting the physicians trained here to other states.”

In announcing the withholdings June 24, Nixon said the move was necessary to keep the state’s budget in balance after bills passed near the end of the session tipped the scale. He cited Senate bills 693, 584, 612, 860, 727, 662 and 829, and House bills 1865, 1296 and 1455, which he said contained tax breaks for a variety of industries that would reduce state revenue by up to $425 million annually.

Nixon also cited the General Assembly’s inaction on Medicaid expansion.