Rowan University and Virtua Health unveil plans for new college of medicine and health

Rowan University and Virtua Health on Monday unveiled their plans for a new college of medicine and health that they hope will become a force in education, health care, and research in South Jersey.

The new college, backed over 10 years by $125 million from Rowan and $85 million from Virtua, combines Rowan’s School of Osteopathic Medicine, Rowan’s School of Nursing and Health Professions, and Virtua’s Our Lady of Lourdes Nursing School, plus a new school of translational biomedical engineering and sciences.

Its formal name is Virtua Health College of Medicine & Life Sciences.

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The partnership, in development since the summer of 2020, comes at a time when dire shortages of nurses and other health-care workers are contributing to widespread financial losses in the health-care industry and giving new urgency to such workforce expansion efforts. Rowan’s goal is to supply workers not just for Virtua, which has five hospitals and is South Jersey’s largest health system by revenue, but all of Southern New Jersey, Rowan provost Tony Lowman said.

The collaboration also comes about a decade after a restructuring of higher education in New Jersey under former Gov. Chris Christie with the goal of building institutions in South Jersey that would keep patients in South Jersey and expand educational opportunities in that region. The restructuring included the creation of the Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in Camden.

Asked about how Rowan manages medical school partnerships with two major health-care rivals in South Jersey, Rowan president Ali A. Houshmand said Rowan leaves that competition aside when making decisions.

“We are only interested in advancing education, health care, and research,” Houshmand said in an interview after Monday’s speeches on the new school. The two medical schools receive separate state appropriations, he said. For Cooper that figure is $43.5 million this year. For the School of Osteopathic Medicine, in Stratford, it is $35.2 million, a Rowan spokesperson said in an email.

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Dennis W. Pullin, president and chief executive of Virtua, said the medical school partnership is not about competition with Cooper. “It really is about doing what’s best for the community,” he said, noting that Virtua has clinical partnerships with Penn Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Virtua’s 2019 acquisition of Lourdes Health System, which included Our Lady of Lourdes School of Nursing, gave it a taste of education. It wanted to do more, Pullin said.

Plans include the construction of a five-story research and educational building on Rowan West Campus, near the intersection of Routes 322 and 55. Additional details on the proposed building were not available. That site is also where nurse education efforts will be focused.

What is now called the Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine sits next to Jefferson Stratford Hospital, which was part of Kennedy Health System until Thomas Jefferson University acquired it in 2017. Kennedy’s three hospitals had been the main teaching sites for students at the Stratford medical school. Jefferson has its own medical school, the Sidney Kimmel Medical College.

“We need our own dedicated hospital,” Houshmand said.

Virtua will now be in that role, with the goal of providing “robust clinical experiences,” Pullin said.