Budget Committee Should Help Medical and Dentistry Schools

              THE SHREVEPORT TIMES MONDAY, MARCH 31, 1969
Budget Committee Should Help
Medical and Dentistry Schools
Unless the Legislative Budget Com-mittee
comes up with some more money
for the LSU system, the medical school
in Shreveport and the dentistry school in
New Orleans will have to close their
doors.
Despite all the optimistic statements
to the contrary, this was the message
given to the committee last week by LSU
President John Hunter. As he put it, the
university, already in dire financial
straits, just cannot take funds away from
its other campuses to aid the medical and
dental school.
This is a reasonable assessment of the
situation the university finds itself in.
Top professors are leaving for better
jobs in other states. And because of a
severe shortage of funds, LSU has just
announced that it must abandon its
Center of Excellence in the physical
sciences on the Bato'n Rouge campus.
The Budget Committee has told
almost all of the colleges and universities
to trim their budgets for the coming
fiscal year to the same sums they
received this year. LSU has received the
same directive.
All state agencies are crying for more
money, and there's not much of it to be
found. The Budget Committee has its
problems and our sympathy, but its
position on the LSU budget has been
unreasonable. LSU simply cannot be
expected to expand its medical education
programs and at the same time create
even more critical circumstances on its
other campuses.
Moreover, the need for the new
medical school and dentistry school are
well-documented.
In 1960 Louisiana had 106 doctors
per 100,000 people. In 1965, the most
recent year for which figures are
available, the ratio dropped to 104.5 per
100,000. The national average that year
had increased to 151 per 100,000.
An interesting fact behind those
statistics is that starting in South
Louisiana and moving northward, Loui-siana's
ratio of doctors to population
decreases. Several parishes have not one
doctor.
Over and over again, skeptics have
posed the question, "Why open a new
medical school in Shreveport? Why not
expand the one in New Orleans instead?"
A legitimate question. The answer is that
there is a practical upper limit to the
number of doctors a medical school can
train, depending on the extent of its
facilities and the number of patients
available to it.
The LSU Medical School in New
Orleans has reached the saturation point.
There is no room for any more students
in the laboratories. If additional facilities
were added on, clinical experience would
be reduced to a marginal level.
The LSU Medical School in Shreve-port
has accepted 32 outstanding stu-dents
from 560 applicants for its first
class, due to begin studies this fall.
Thirty of those students are from
Louisiana, two from East Texas.
Dean Edgar Hull has reduced his
budget request from $2.2 million to $1.9
million, an increase of $1.3 million over
the current fiscal year.
At the dental school in New Orleans,
the situation is slightly different, but the
need is just as obvious. Loyola Universi-ty,
faced with the financial problems of
all private universities, is phasing out its
dental school—the only one in the state.
LSU is taking up where Loyola is cutting
back.
Last year Loyola closed the first year
of its dental school and LSU opened its
first year. This fall Loyola will discontin-ue
offering second-year courses, and
again LSU is trying to fill the gap.
It will be 1976—five years after its
new buildings are complete — before
LSU can produce as many dentists as
Loyola has been producing. The school is
receiving twice as many applications as it
can accept.
In 1966, the latest year for which
figures are available, Louisiana had one
dentist for every 2,659 residents. The
national average was one to 1,714.
The dental school received an appro-priation
of $910,400 for the current
fiscal year and is requesting $1.93
million for the coming year. Of this
amount, $432,308 will go towards paying
off construction bonds, leaving $1.5
million for operating costs.
The Division of Administration esti-mates
the state will receive an increase
of $19 million in nonhighway revenues
next fiscal year. This is the amount of
money the Budget Committee can parcel
out to state agencies showing the
greatest need.
Together, the medical and dental
schools are requesting increases of $2.3
million. This is a reasonable request, and
the Budget Committee should increase
the LSU system's budget by at least that
much.
At a time when Louisiana ranks far
behind the national average in doctors
and dentists, we cannot afford to lag
further. The new medical and dental
schools are good investments in the
state's future.