The Bowling Green region’s medical facilities and services landscape is rapidly changing.

A medical school partnership between the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, The Medical Center and Western Kentucky University is poised to help alleviate a physician shortage in the region, allow WKU faculty access to medical research opportunities, demonstrate a community commitment to smart growth and help keep the area’s best and brightest in Warren County, officials have said.

A GROWING SECTOR

The Bowling Green area is tapping into one of the hottest job sectors in the nation – health care.

Critical shortages of nurses, doctors, surgeons and other medical practitioners are making it difficult to staff a health care services population that grows daily with the retirement of the baby boomer generation.

A publication from the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce noted that registered nurse, with an average annual salary of $56,800, is one of the top 10 positions in demand in health care here.

Western is doing what it can to alleviate the nursing shortage by doubling the number of nurses it graduates thanks to a partnership with Med Center Health to construct The Medical Center-WKU Health Sciences Complex on the Med Center Health Campus. The building, which also houses other WKU medical-related programs, opened in 2013.

In some cases it takes a while to develop a medical professional to put into the job pipeline.

For example, according to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, an anesthesiologist needs to earn a doctoral or professional degree and serve an internship/residency before moving into the field.

Just in the anesthesiologist field alone, there are a projected 5,000 to 9,999 new jobs and a projected growth rate of 20 to 29 percent. Those professionals, according to 2015 median pay, can earn $75,000 or more annually.

“Employment of health care occupations is projected to grow 19 percent from 2017 to 2024, much faster than the average for all occupations, adding about 2.3 million new jobs,” according to the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook.

“Health care occupations will add more jobs than any other group of occupations,” the bureau report noted.

“This growth is expected due to an aging population and because federal health insurance reform should increase the number of individuals who have access to health insurance,” the report said. A recent effort by President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, fizzled recently.

The median annual wage for health care practitioners and technical occupations – such as registered nurses, physicians and surgeons, and dental hygienists – was $62,610 in May 2015, which was higher than the median annual wage for all occupations in the economy of $36,200, the Occupational Handbook noted.

Health care support occupations – such as home health aides, occupational therapy assistants and medical transcriptionists – had a median annual wage of $27,040 in May 2015, lower than the median annual wage for all occupations in the economy, the handbook introduction noted.

Industrial bonds finance med school building

Warren County Fiscal Court on March 24 approved $29 million in hospital industrial bonds.

“We’re very proud any time we can advance health care in our community,” said Warren County Judge-Executive Mike Buchanon.

UK announced in February it would expand its medical school through a partnership with the hospital and WKU. Medical school students will attend classes here in Bowling Green in a building on the campus of The Medical Center. The medical degree will be conferred by UK, and a certain number of slots in the program here will be available first to WKU students.

“It’s not every day that you’re able to get a medical school in your community and this is a big accomplishment,” said Dr. Don Brown, The Medical Center’s director of medical education. “It raises the bar for the practice of medicine.”

Ron Sowell, executive vice president of Med Center Health, said the project includes a two-story building with room for the four-year medical school. There will be physicians’ offices and a new 800-vehicle parking garage.

Sowell said the collaboration allows UK to grow its program and train more physicians for Kentucky.

“We have a need for physicians,” he said.

The new med school is scheduled to open in the summer of 2018.

New medical professional area along Lovers Lane

Med Center Health also in early March confirmed a 10-acre, $4 million purchase from developer David Chandler’s 103 acres for The Hub project next to the Lovers Lane Soccer Complex on the former Roy G. Cooksey Jr. estate.

The Hub will include a Med Center Health professional presence, new restaurants, a bank, a new four-story hotel and single-family housing.

The Lovers Lane area is becoming a major medical and professional services sector on both sides of the road with the announcement of the Chandler development.

Fairview Community Health Center recently purchased land in Mount Victor Olde Towne off Lovers Lane to build a facility that will house the family practice offered by its main building and satellite clinics, which include its adult and prenatal services.

In the same general area off Lovers Lane across the road Graves-Gilbert Clinic has received a certificate of need from Kentucky to construct a new ambulatory surgery center next door to Western Kentucky Orthopaedic and Neurosurgical Associates in partnership with HCA-owned TriStar Greenview Regional Hospital in Bowling Green.

GGC and WKONA merged in recent years. Graves-Gilbert also is merging with OHP Work Care/SouthernCare Walk-In Clinics.