'The future of healthcare': University of Utah opens $215M medical school

SALT LAKE CITY — As important as the University of Utah Health system is to the state, even its strongest advocates would admit its educational facilities were not quite up to modern standards.

But that's no longer a concern, as the U. on Wednesday opened the $215 million, state-of-the-art Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine in a landmark chapter for the state's only university health system.

U. President Taylor Randall said Wednesday marked more than simply the opening of a new building on campus, but the ushering in of "the future of healthcare."

At over 210,000 square feet, the eight-story building was designed with the "next century" in mind, said Dr. Kristina Callis Duffin, dean of the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine.

In addition to future-proofing the university's medical school, Callis Duffin said the building will bring everything under one roof, solving the issue of the school's facilities feeling spread out and "fragmented."

Traditional lecture halls were replaced by massive pavilions outfitted with round tables designed to foster collaboration. The building offers access to virtual, simulation, and experiential training opportunities for over 500 students across 26 clinical and basic science departments, including nursing and pharmacy.

And the star of the show might be the Dumke Advanced Simulation Center and Anatomy Lab, which U. leaders professed will provide a best-in-the-nation experiential learning environment where students can get a taste of the demanding nature of their future careers in a no-risk environment — music to the ears of Gov. Spencer Cox.

"Medical education is changing rapidly. Students today need earlier clinical experience. They need advanced simulation, collaboration across disciplines, and the ability to learn in environments that more closely resemble the places where they actually practice medicine," Cox said.

Cox noted the massive economic impact the U.'s health system has on the state, supporting nearly 70,000 jobs and contributing an estimated $7.6 billion in GDP growth in 2024.

Additionally, U. Health is responsible for training approximately two-thirds of physicians in Utah and providing patient care for nearly 10% of the geographic area of the continental U.S., the university said in a release.

Even with these realities in mind, Cox said numbers alone could never capture the system's full impact, telling a group of medical students on hand that they don't put in long hours studying and make lifestyle sacrifices for the sake of Utah's economy.

"It's to make lives better for people you love and people you don't love. People whom you care about and people you may disagree with, but you take an oath to save lives and make lives better, and that's what this is all about," Cox said.

$110 million of the $215 million project came from a "monumental" joint gift from the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation and the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation.

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