The University of Minnesota Medical School is doubling down on efforts to train more rural physicians, announcing recently that students on its Duluth branch will now train in that Greater Minnesota setting for four years rather than two.
The announcement comes as the university prepares to open a four-year medical school branch in St. Cloud next fall. Since its inception 52 years ago, the Duluth branch has trained students for two years, then sent them to the Twin Cities campus to complete their program.
The push for change on the Duluth campus came from the realization that the St. Cloud branch would be training students for four years in an effort to create rural physicians, said Kevin Diebel, the dean of the medical school’s Duluth campus.
Diebel said that while the Duluth campus already trains physicians to work in rural and Indigenous communities, by selecting students who have interest in those areas, there were gaps in keeping students in the area to work.
“We’re looking deeper at the desire for these potential medical students to actually have an impact on rural communities or Native American communities, and we do that by looking through their application and seeing if they have any meaningful, lived experience or work experience in these various communities, so that they can demonstrate to the admissions committee that they really do want to after they’re done with their M.D. program, continue to contribute in a positive manner into these communities,” Diebel said.
But one challenge, Diebel said, is that those students eventually transfer to the Twin Cities for their last two years of training — and some change their minds. He said that while the Duluth program is above the national average in terms of training people for primary care and for getting people into rural communities, it could be improved.
“The model works, but we’re looking at ways to enhance it even further,” he said. “We’re really going to be serious about recruiting students with intentionality and seeing them from start to finish in a program that has more of a rural focus and Native American focus.”
Since the Duluth campus’s inception in 1972, there’s been a decline in the number of graduates who end up as primary care or rural physicians — though it hasn’t been drastic enough to drive the change from two to four years, Diebel said. According to a medical school presentation at a Board of Regents subcommittee meeting Thursday, 44% of the Duluth school’s alumni end up practicing in communities with populations of less than 25,000.
At that meeting, Jakub Tolar, the university’s vice president for clinical affairs and dean of the medical school, talked about the rural provider shortage and shared a strategic plan to address workforce shortages, for which the medical school hopes to get $45 million in recurring funding.
Tolar also spoke about visits he took to rural communities like Hutchinson, Wadena, Sleepy Eye, Glencoe and Roseau, saying he heard from many that they wanted more healthcare providers who have been trained in rural settings.
“The primary driver of the change is having a focus a little bit more regionally on the training from a rural perspective,” Diebel said. “Duluth, being a two-year program — we have a harder and harder time accomplishing the goals of our mission, while the other campuses are functioning as four-year campuses.”
The University of Minnesota Medical School trains roughly 240 students each year, a quarter of whom (roughly 65 students) are at the Duluth campus. This shift won’t change the number of students in the Duluth classes, but rather will keep them there for more years.
As is, the University encourages students to join the Rural Physician Associate Program, which gives students clinical experience in rural communities. In the past few years, Diebel said 20-30 students from each class have joined that program. The program will stay, but Diebel said the school will prioritize getting students from the Duluth campus into it.
“Part of what we’re hoping to be able to say is that you get your education from kindergarten through M.D. in Duluth,” Charles Nies, the chancellor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, said at the meeting.
The campus is also working with Aspirus St. Luke’s and Essentia Health hospitals to increase the number of students who participate in clinical training. Right now, 10 students participate, but they’ll be working to gradually expand the capacity in the program to 30 students by the spring of 2027.
Diebel said there’s a big need for family medicine, noting that about 48% of all clinical encounters in rural Minnesota counties are with a family physician. There’s also demand for psychiatrists, emergency medicine and general surgery, he said.
At the Thursday meeting, medical school officials also brought up a proposal for a new building in Duluth for training healthcare professionals, which would have new anatomy labs, simulation and research spaces. The school would need regents’ approval and, ideally, would include it in the university’s legislative request for the 2026 session.
