doubled again by 1980. In 2000, Florida’s population was 15,982,378, making
it the fourth-largest state by population in the United States. In 2004, the U.S.
Census Bureau estimated that the Florida population was 17,397,161.1
The ethnic diversity of Florida is comparable to that of the three states with
larger populations: New York, California, and Texas. The state has a large and
growing population of people over 65, comprising nearly 20% of the population.
Perhaps less widely known is the fact that Florida’s large geographical
expanse includes many rural areas, found in all 67 counties in the state. There
are medically underserved areas in every county, and the Florida Department of
Health has designated 20 entire counties as medically underserved. Fifteen of
these medically underserved counties are in North Florida. In the late 1990s, the
output of Florida’s medical schools (three allopathic and one osteopathic), about
500 graduates, was far short of the demand for physicians in this rapidly
growing state.
The number of first-year residency positions was only slightly more than the
number of medical school graduates in the late 1990s. By comparison, at that
time the state of New York, with a population of 18,000,000, had 13 medical
schools, which graduated over 1,700 doctors a year and offered over 3,000 firstyear
residency positions. To match the national ratio for number of residency
positions per 100,000 population, Florida would need to almost double the
number of such residency positions.
In Florida, the supply of physicians was and is heavily dependent on “imports”
from other states and nations. The large majority of physicians licensed in Florida
each year are from outside the state. In the late 1990s, 30% to 40% of the physicians
in Florida were foreign-born international medical graduates. More than
half of Florida’s physicians move to Florida after completing all medical training,
and an unknown percentage (not tracked by state records) move to Florida to
retire and are in part-time clinical practice.
Many qualified students in the large medical applicant pool within the state did
not have the opportunity to study medicine in their home state, Florida, because
there was no room for them in the existing medical schools. With this problem and
the de facto policy of meeting the demand for physicians by importing them from
other states and nations in mind, in 1997 the leadership at FSU and in the Florida
legislature began to make plans for a medical school that would build on FSU’s
30-year partnership in medical education with the University of Florida.
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