Jeffrey Horstmyer, M.D.

I am a board-certified neurologist at Mercy and a 1989 graduate of the University of Miami School of Medicine. I have just finished four years as chief of Mercy’s Division of Neurology and am on track to become president of Mercy’s approximately 900-member medical staff in two years, something I look forward to with great anticipation. My FIU affiliations? I am chairman of the University’s Council of 100, an invitation-only group of civic and business leaders committed to promoting FIU’s mission throughout the South Florida community. In addition, I serve on the College of Engineering’s Biomedical Engineering Advisory Board and am an ex-officio member of the FIU Foundation Board of Directors. My wife and partner in life, Domitila “Tillie” Fox, is an instructor in the University’s Department of Mathematics and has been at FIU since the beginning.

I will be communicating with you through the alumni newsletter every month because I believe, passionately, that the medical school initiative your alma mater has undertaken is so vital to the overall health of this community, that to remain disengaged would be to ignore the physician’s first rule of medicine: Primum non nocere – First do no harm. A medical school at FIU will elevate the quality of medical care in South Florida and provide local access to affordable, quality medical education. In a nutshell, that is my motivation.

Through this column I will share information with you regarding why there is a need for another medical school in Florida, as well as why FIU is best qualified to educate the next generation of physicians. It is my hope that the information shared in this column will inspire conversation and debate about this critical issue among alumni and their families, neighbors and colleagues. If any of my columns prompt questions with you, please do not hesitate to send me your queries via email to horstmyj@fiu.edu.

Right now, there is an acknowledged shortage of physicians in this country. In fact, the American Medical Association recently renounced a longstanding policy that the nation trained enough physicians. In Florida, which has the nation’s oldest physician work force, the problem is exacerbated because two-thirds of Florida’s 44,000 doctors are 55 years of age or older.

To meet the current needs of Floridians, Florida must license more than 2,500 physicians annually. It only graduates 500 doctors a year; other states and foreign countries supply the rest. But these same states are also experiencing shortages, and competition to draw doctors from a flat national pool is fierce.

Florida’s population is expected to increase by five million residents by 2020. The last time Florida’s population grew by five million, the state built another medical school, at Florida State University. The state will need to build at least one more medical school very soon to meet the needs generated by South Florida’s population growth.

A new medical school at FIU would not only increase the number of doctors who enter the profession each year in Florida, but it would also support hundreds of medical residencies, another greatly needed stage in the training of physicians who would practice in Florida. For South Florida, a public medical school would also mean improved health care, enhanced public health and economic development. From where I stand, that’s a win-win situation for all concerned.