Creating a state medical school at URI is one of the keys for overcoming a worsening shortage of primary care doctors in Rhode Island, according to a legislative panel.
The state Senate study commission, co-chaired by URI President Marc Parlange and state Sen. Pamela Lauria (D-Barrington), has been reviewing the issue for more than a year. It unanimously approved its findings on Tuesday.
During a Statehouse media availability, Lauria cited data showing that from among 135 recent graduates from the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, only one stayed to practice medicine here.
“Rhode Island is an outlier,” said Lauria, who works as a nurse practitioner for Brown University Health, one of the state’s two largest hospital groups. “We’re one of the last states without a public medical school. We know that that impedes Rhode Island’s access to medical school and ultimately is detrimental to Rhode Islanders access to care.”
According to the commission, other keys to overcoming the shortage of primary care doctors include providing in-state residencies, loan forgiveness and scholarship programs for graduates who commit to providing care in Rhode Island, and ongoing efforts to raise the state’s low reimbursement rate compared with Massachusetts and Connecticut for public and private insurance.
The idea of creating a medical school at Rhode Island’s flagship public university was first suggested by former Senate President Dominick Ruggerio, who died last year.
In May 2025, a draft version of a report by Tripp Umbach, a Pittsburgh-based consultant, found that between 200,000 and 400,000 Rhode Islanders lacked access to primary care services, and that 44% of physicians in the state were 55 or older.
Senators are targeting 2029 for an initial class of students at the new medical school.
Getting the program off the ground would require an initial $20 million commitment from the state and $150 million in fundraising by URI, according to the panel.
It’s unclear for now if the state money would come through a direct allocation, a ballot question in November, or potential federal funding through the Rural Health Administration,
The study commission’s consultant found that a URI medical school would produce almost $200 million in annual economic activity, supporting about 1,300 jobs and contributing about $4.5 million in annual local and state tax revenue once fully operational.
Senate President Val Lawson of East Providence, joined by Majority Leader Frank Ciccone (D-Providence) and Whip David Tikoian (D-Smithfield), described the thinking around a URI medical school as part of a short, medium and long-term strategy by lawmakers to address Rhode Island’s pressing healthcare needs.
Lawson was asked about critics who say a med school would do little in the short term to address the state’s primary care needs.
She said that misses the point, adding, “If we don’t do anything, we don’t want to have the same conversation under the same circumstances 10 years from now.”
Lawson said her own primary care doctor is retiring, although she thinks a successor is lined up.
Lauria said the state Office of Health Insurance Commission will this year review reimbursement rates for Medicaid, the healthcare program mostly for low-income individuals.
“That is the main place where Rhode Island can have an effect on our rates,” she said, adding that if she did her work as a nurse practitioner in Massachusetts, she would earn 20 to 30% more income.
