A PILOT-STUDY OF THE COST OF EDUCATING UNDERGRADUATE MEDICAL-STUDENTSAT VIRGINIA-COMMONWEALTH-UNIVERSITY

Purpose. To develop a model isolating the annual per-student cost of, and the fund sources for, educating undergraduate medical students at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical College of Virginia Schoo l of Medicine. Method. For 1994-95, hours that faculty spent in direct scheduled contact with students and time that students spent in direc t scheduled contact with faculty were inventoried. Student, faculty, a nd resident contact hours for clinical clerkships and electives were e stimated. Faculty contact hours and average faculty workload profiles were used to compute the number of full-time-equivalent faculty positi ons required to deliver the undergraduate medical curriculum. Support staff and operating budget requirements were based on the number of re quired faculty, and actual salary averages were used to compute facult y and staff costs. Other institutional costs that indirectly support u ndergraduate medical education were estimated. Using faculty contact h ours and actual cost data, fund sources that support undergraduate med ical education were identified. Results. Medical school faculty spent more than 89,000 scheduled hours teaching 674 undergraduate medical st udents. The faculty-student ratio was 1:3.35. Residents spent nearly 7 9,000 hours training undergraduate medical students. The total annual cost of undergraduate medical education was $69,992 per student. State funds contributed less than a third of the required financial resourc es; faculty clinical practice funds provided nearly half. Conclusion. Although there are inherent complexities, isolating the cost and fund sources of undergraduate medical education is an essential first step toward providing categorical funding. The model developed during the s tudy provides a basis for assigning costs, allocating resources among instructional programs, and predicting incremental costs (or savings) and revenue requirements. The model may be of use to other medical sch ools contemplating new strategies for financing undergraduate medical education.