A stalled legislative proposal this year that would have dismantled a decades-long partnership for Idaho medical students eventually led to a working group looking at increasing medical education in the Gem State.
The Idaho Medical Education Working Group — made up of two legislators and stakeholders from the Idaho Hospital Association, Idaho Medical Association, Idaho State Board of Education, Idaho’s current medical education programs, and a physician from the state Graduate Medical Education Committee — met for the first time Monday at the Capitol in Boise.
Co-Chair Rep. Dustin Manwaring, R-Pocatello, said at the meeting that the group was formed as a continuation of a discussion started during the 2025 legislative session, and the goal is to create a plan to expand medical education opportunities for Idaho students.
“All of us have a passion to address our physician shortage in Idaho,” Manwaring said Monday. “It’s frankly, in my opinion, a crisis.”
Manwaring during the legislative session introduced House Bill 176, which would have ended Idaho’s partnership with the University of Washington Medical School through WWAMI, which stands for Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho, and moved seats to another medical school program. Manwaring cited frustration with UW over not expanding the number of Idaho seats by 10, as the Legislature asked it to in 2022, and a long delay in signing an amended contract agreeing not to include abortion training in Idaho students’ education.
The bill sparked strong backlash from health care providers, clinical instructors, and current and former students from the program.
Amid the backlash, Manwaring introduced a new bill that instead directed the state to look into adding more seats for Idaho students in other programs, the Idaho Capital Sun reported. House Bill 368 originally would have also cut 10 seats from WWAMI, but was later amended so that the existing program would remain intact.
As a result of HB 368, which was signed into law in April, the group is tasked with creating a plan for the governor and Legislature to reduce Idaho’s physician shortage, link graduate and undergraduate medical education, maintain and increase high quality programs for Idaho’s medical students, keep more money spent on medical education within Idaho, and expand cooperation among education partners and minimize conflicts.
Idaho has no public medical school in its borders; this is how its doctors are trained.
Working group members on Monday got a detailed lay of the land when it comes to training future Idaho doctors.
Without a public medical school in Idaho, the state supports 40 seats at the UW medical school through WWAMI and 10 seats at the University of Utah’s medical school.
WWAMI students spend their first two years of classroom education at the University of Idaho’s Moscow campus, during which the state’s funding for those students goes to the U of I. The students then spend their next two years doing clinical rotations, which could take place in any of the program’s partner states, and at which point Idaho’s state support goes to the UW. The state pays on average $44,000 per student, which does not support tuition but supports the students’ education and reserves their seat, said Rayme Geidl, interim co-director of the U of I School of Health and Medical Professions and interim regional dean of Idaho WWAMI medical education.
Idaho’s 10 students who train in Utah spend their first year of classroom education at the campus in Salt Lake City, and their second year doing a new process of “longitudinal integrated clerkships,” in which students may rotate specialties daily. During years three and four, students may focus on a specialty, and at this point Idaho students return to the Gem State for their primary care rotation, according to Ben Chan, associate dean of admissions and associate dean of Idaho affairs at the University of Utah.
Idaho State University has a number of health education programs, including nursing, dental hygiene, counseling and graduate programs in pharmacy, dentistry, and a family medicine residency, said Rex Force, ISU vice president for health sciences.
The panel also heard from the state’s private, for-profit institution, the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine, or ICOM, which has been running since 2018.
This year, 37 students of the class of 225 students were from Idaho, said Kevin Wilson, dean and chief academic officer at ICOM.
So far, all of the Idaho students who’ve trained at the school have chosen to remain in Idaho for clinical rotations at its core sites in the Treasure Valley, Magic Valley and in eastern Idaho, Wilson said.
Clinical sites are a challenge to expanding undergraduate medical education in Idaho
During med school, students are required to spend time doing clinical rotations, in which they work in health care settings and receive training from practitioners. The providers who oversee their clinical training are known as preceptors, and those who spoke Monday indicated it is hard to find enough of them in Idaho.
This issue also came up frequently during the 2025 legislative session when Manwaring questioned WWAMI representatives as to why the program hadn’t yet expanded seats for Idaho students.
Multiple presenters indicated a number factors that drive this shortage including the fact that the state has lost several OB-GYNs and thus preceptors in that field are limited and there is a competition among health care programs that makes it more difficult to place students.
Doctors left Idaho after abortion ban, study confirms
More than 40% of Idaho’s practicing obstetricians have left the state since the state’s near-total felony abortion ban took effect, the Idaho Capital Sun reported.
Force, with ISU, said that the school has to place physician assistant and nurse practitioner students and so do other programs such as Lewis Clark State College and community colleges.
“It’s a very crowded, competitive learning environment,” Force said.
Speakers also said that taking on a medical student can mean a doctor has to see fewer patients, which can impact a clinic’s income. Some programs pay preceptors for the students they see, and others, such as ISU, do not.
This can create a challenge, said work force member Dr. Ted Epperly, graduate medical education coordinator for the state of Idaho and CEO of Full Circle Health.
Public comment centers on supporting WWAMI
Five physicians spoke during the public comment portion of Monday’s meeting. All of them were connected to WWAMI in some way. All of them had a similar message: keep WWAMI in place while exploring outside options.
All of the speakers said they supported the mission of the working group, but asked that they maintain Idaho’s partnership with UW, which they noted, is consistently top-ranked among medical schools in the nation.
“Because Idaho WWAMI is a public entity, it prioritizes Idahoans’ needs and not profits, not anything else,” said Joey Florence, a doctor at Full Circle Health.
Working group co-Chair Sen. Dave Lent, R-Idaho Falls, said he appreciates what WWAMI has done over the years, but more needed to be done.
“We love it,” he said. “We love you participating in this. But the state’s growing, and we have to look to the future.”
The working group plans to meet again Aug. 26.
Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: info@idahocapitalsun.com.