Northern Ontario School of Medicine independence not an issue if region's needs met, former dean says

The founding dean of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) says a provincial bill, aimed at making the school an independent institution, shouldn't be an issue as long as NOSM continues to address the health needs of the region.

"The key issue is that NOSM continues to be supported by the people of northern Ontario and by the Ontario government to ensure the continuation of NOSM's important work," Dr. Roger Strasser told CBC News in an email.

The creation of NOSM, Canada's first new medical school in over 30 years,wasannounced in 2001. Itopened four years later as a partnership with campuses at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and Laurentian University in Sudbury,with the mandate to improve the health of people and communities in northern Ontario.

The province's recently tabled bill would give theNOSM the authority to grant degrees and operate independently.

But the conceptsparked surprise and outrage from academic and political leaders in the northwest.

Lakehead Universitypresident Moira McPherson called it a bad idea, and questioned whether the NOSM would keep a campus in Thunder Bay.

But Dr. Sarita Verma, the NOSM's current president, saidthe school has "no intention to leave Thunder Bay or Sudbury."

NOSM already largely independent

Ross Romano,provincial minister of colleges and universities, tabled the Northern Ontario School of Medicine University Act on April 15.

If passed,the NOSM would be free "of a great deal of additional burden, some red tape and regulation that is duplicitous and unnecessary," Romano has said. He denied the bill had anything to do with the financial struggles of Laurentian, which isin the process of restructuringunder the insolvency process.

The move to separate the NOSM from Lakehead and Laurentian wouldn't bechallenging, said Strasser, who was dean for 17 years.

"NOSM has always been an independent corporation that has its own board of directors and receives funding directly from the Ontario government for its health professional education and workforce programs," he said.

Alex Usher, president of consulting firm Higher Education Strategy Associates, said the NOSM has always been a unique institution.

"It's about pumping out general practitioners. It doesn't have the same emphasis on specialists that the big schools have, and so the nature of its relationship to [Lakehead and Laurentian], I would argue, was always much more tenuous than it was in any other school."

The medical school's 2021-2025 strategic plan, which was launched in November 2020, doesn'tmention either partner university, noted Usher.

The higher education consultant said he thinks the original reason to align the medical school with the two largest universities in northern Ontario was to create "a kind of safety net" at the beginning.

• Northern Ontario School of Medicine leads Canada in matching grads to residency programs

"Fifteen years later, two things have happened," said Usher. "NOSM seems to be working out pretty well and can do things pretty well, and... at least one of those two partner institutions is demonstrably not very well managed.

"The rationale for the connection has just been eroding."

Medical school adds prestige to a university

Lakehead University president Moira McPherson disagreed with Usher'sassessment.

"We believe that this could really destabilize medical education in our region, and we think it really has the possibility of undermining the reputation and credibility of this medical program and the credibility that comes from its association with Lakehead University,"McPherson said in an interview with CBC last week.

But Usher saidLakeheadis the onebenefiting more from the partnership with NOSM.

"It's a prestige thing, right? If you gave Algoma [University] a medical school, you'd think of it differently. In a sense, that's what happened with Lakehead."

Partnering with the medical school may have also created some "spillover" benefits for Lakehead and Laurentian, including access to medical or scientific equipment and research funding, according to Usher.

Healso said there's no reason to think those relationships would end if NOSM becomes an independent, degree-granting institution.

Lakehead and NOSM "are still physically next to each other ... and there's no automatic reason that they're going to change that."