A medical school in Penobscot County could bring needed physicians to the area and improve northern Maine’s health, but several hurdles stand in its way.
Despite those obstacles, including student loan uncertainty, financial turmoil at Northern Light Health and federal funding struggles at the University of Maine System, such a facility is still needed, multiple health care officials said.
An ongoing study will determine if bringing the first public medical school to Maine is feasible. The UMaine System received $75,000 from the Legislature to fund the study and it partnered with Tripp Umbach, a consulting firm that has worked with medical schools across the country, to conduct it.
The study’s recommendations are due to the Legislature by November.
The push to open Maine’s first public medical school is meant to address a critical shortage of physicians, especially in rural Maine, that has led to climbing costs for hospitals hiring travel staff and falling doctor-to-patient ratios across the state. But ongoing struggles within the University of Maine and Northern Light Health, as well as recent changes by the Trump administration, creates significant obstacles that could prevent such a facility from being built.
It’s not clear exactly how many physicians the state needs, but 85,155 Mainers live in health care professional shortage areas, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Just 44.54 percent of Maine’s health care needs are currently met, the data show.
That shortage will grow as practicing doctors in the state get older, Dr. James Jarvis, director of clinical education for Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center, said. Nearly 40 percent of all physicians in Maine are within retirement age, according to a study by the Cicero Institute.
Younger physicians are not replacing them because of a lack of training and studying opportunities, along with difficulties recruiting students to practice in Maine. Without more training programs in the northern half of the state, filling spots after physicians retire will only get harder, Jarvis said.
Northern Light trains roughly 50 students from the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine. Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor has just four residency programs.
That number could grow if a medical school opened in Penobscot County, Jarvis said.
And that could keep doctors in northern Maine. Medical school graduates are more likely to practice within 100 miles of where their residency took place, according to the Journal of Graduate Medical Education.
In addition to bringing more physicians, a medical school would be a boon for the area’s economy and health, Jarvis said.
Every dollar spent by a medical school contributes $1.62 back into the U.S. economy, according to a study by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Medical institutions also create 7.1 million jobs both directly and indirectly across the country, producing more than $2,200 per job in the economy.
Maine’s northernmost counties had the highest unemployment rates in the state in June, including a 3 percent unemployment rate in Penobscot County to 3.9 percent in Aroostook County, according to the Maine Department of Labor.
Additionally, patients treated at a major teaching hospital have higher odds of survival compared with nonteaching hospitals, according to a study by the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Despite the critical need for physicians in Maine, several hurdles have emerged in recent months to building a medical school.
Among them is President Donald Trump’s termination of research grant funding. More than 1,100 National Institutes of Health research grants have been cut in 2025 totaling more than $2 billion that funded at least 160 clinical trials, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Medical schools use that money to fund research, personnel and laboratories when conducting clinical trials. Clinical trial patients would also lose access to treatment.
Along with research cuts, changes to eligibility requirements for Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Grad PLUS loans are predicted to affect 50 percent of all medical student loans.
Costs to operate such a program, coupled with a lack of training opportunities in Maine, are two challenges that the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine in Biddeford — the state’s only medical school — runs into, UNE spokesperson Sarah Delage said.
The shortage in training opportunities forces the university to send roughly half of its students out of state for residency, Delage said. That makes them less likely to practice in Maine.
And the changes to student loan forgiveness could drive students to pursue lucrative specialties rather than primary care fields, where there is a greater need, Delage said.
The university affiliated with the medical school would also need to pay to build and staff the center. A Penobscot County medical school would “likely be associated with the University of Maine,” according to the feasibility study’s announcement last year.
The costs included in building a new center alone would be enough for a school to think twice about opening a new program, Jarvis said.
Building and maintaining a medical school would be costly on top of an already tight budget, UMaine System spokesperson Samantha Warren said.
“We also recognize that our public system is chronically underfunded and burdened by $1.8 billion in deferred maintenance, and that substantial new and ongoing resources would be required to start and sustain a public medical school,” Warren said.
The feasibility study comes as the university system struggles with the Trump administration over federal funding.
In late May, the system revealed that the federal government had held up close to $50 million in funding. As of this month, the federal government has restored 62 awards to the university system, more than $25 million of which remained unspent, while another 25 grants, nearly $6.5 million of which remained unspent, had been terminated or paused, Warren said earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Northern Light faces its own financial shortcomings.
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The system lost $156 million in the most recent fiscal year and closed its Waterville hospital last month, as reported by the Bangor Daily News. Staffing cuts or positions not being filled are also on the horizon.
Northern Light has resorted to hiring more expensive travel staff to fill positions in recent years.
Sally Weiss, vice president of workforce policy and strategic initiatives for the Maine Hospital Association, said the challenges Northern Light and the University of Maine System are facing shouldn’t be a setback to solving the physician shortage.
“If you put all the political and financial pressures away, the reality is that we still need doctors in Maine,” Weiss said.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated which federal student loans are predicted to affect medical students. The story also has been updated to better reflect the federal funding struggles at the University of Maine System.