New medical school in St. Cloud looks to get more doctors into rural areas

ST. CLOUD – For Jared Nordstrom, it happened at a cafeteria at the Minnesota Zoo more than two decades ago.

“I heard a crash and a scream,” Nordstrom said, describing how helpless he felt watching a person fall to the ground while having a seizure. That was the moment he knew he wanted to become a doctor.

“When the paramedics showed up, I saw how they were able to be that person who knew exactly what to do,” he said, “and give that person help in one of their times of greatest needs.”

For Sierra Bermudez, that moment came after getting pregnant as a high schooler.

“I wasn’t making the best decisions,” she said, noting her parents worried she wouldn’t finish high school.

But her doctors and nurses were extremely supportive and opened her eyes to the wonders of the human body — and a possible career path, she said.

“I felt so safe, and that helped me so much,” she said. “After I got pregnant, I really changed my life around.”

Now, Bermudez is a college graduate, wife and mother to four children. And next month, she will join Nordstrom and 22 other students as the inaugural class at the University of Minnesota Medical School CentraCare Regional Campus in St. Cloud.

The school — the first new medical school campus to open in the state in 50 years — was dreamed up a few years ago by Dr. Ken Holmen, president and chief executive of CentraCare, and Dr. Jakub Tolar, dean of the U’s medical school.

It will have a focus on rural health, similar to the U’s Duluth campus, and is meant to help address the rapidly growing shortage of medical professionals, which is now at about 37,000 physicians nationally and is expected to grow to 86,000 by 2036, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

The shortage is bad for everyone, but it’s causing rural patients in particular to face longer waits, travel farther for care and experience poorer health outcomes than their urban counterparts. Minnesota Department of Health data shows as of 2024, there were about 33 family medicine physicians per 100,000 people in metro areas but fewer than three per 100,000 in rural areas.

“Where you live shouldn’t dictate if you live,” said Dr. Jill Amsberry, a pediatrician and assistant dean at the new medical school, housed in a renovated CentraCare building near the health care organization’s main hub in west St. Cloud.

For Amsberry, expanding rural health care — or at least slowing the rapid decline of providers — is personal. As a teenager living in rural North Dakota, she experienced the death of her uncle after he had a heart attack on his cattle ranch.

“It was too far away from medical care. An ambulance just simply couldn’t get to him in time,” she said.

And while there weren’t enough rural providers at that time, “we certainly had more than we do now,” she said.

Amsberry noted that about 20% of the U.S. population lives in rural communities but only 11% of physicians practice there. And fewer than 5% of medical students come from rural areas.

“The whole mission [is] to recruit students from rural communities, train them and prepare them for practice in rural communities with the idea that they’re more likely to stay long term and serve rural Minnesota,” said Dr. Chris Fallert, dean of the new campus.

School leaders say the medical school acceptance rates for rural students are often lower, but not because they are less capable. Often, future applicants have less access to people who can help with the process.

“A really cool aspect of the campus is that we’re attracting people that haven’t maybe considered going to medical school before,” Fallert said, “and I think we’ll continue to do that.”

Nordstrom, 36, is one of those students. He works as a nurse educator in the emergency trauma department at St. Cloud Hospital and lives near Foley with his wife and two children, along with a dog, cats and chickens.

Nordstrom started as a pre-med student at St. Cloud State University, but “medical school didn’t seem practical or attainable at the time, so I pivoted to nursing,” he said.

Last spring, a friend suggested he think about medical school, especially since the St. Cloud campus was opening.

“And then I just couldn’t get it out of my head,” he said.

Like Amsberry, Nordstrom feels the importance of rural health care deeply. Growing up in Cold Spring, Nordstrom was a freshman during the 2003 school shooting at Rocori High School. The shooter rode his bus, and he was friends with one of the victims.

“Living in a rural city [meant] there were maybe some disconnects and disparities with certain health care resources,” he said, noting he also felt there was stigma around mental health care living in a small town. “I wish there was some more normalization of asking for help in that sense.”

Now, as an adult, Nordstrom continues to feel the impact of health disparities in his job at St. Cloud Hospital, which is the emergency trauma center for the region.

“I just think about how busy our ERs are, and the lack of primary care family physicians [in rural areas],” he said. “What if we could help people more on the front end before a crisis starts?”

Bermudez, 25, also grew up in rural Minnesota — in Becker, Motley and other small towns as a child. Now she lives in St. Cloud and works as a lab technician for CentraCare.

While they don’t know exactly what specialty they want to work in, both Bermudez and Nordstrom plan to be providers in rural areas.

“I feel like help goes a lot farther where it’s more needed,” Bermudez said.

During the admission process — where about 5,000 applicants to the U’s medical schools are winnowed to just a few hundred students — about 2,000 potential students listed the new St. Cloud campus as their first or second preference, Amsberry said.

The students in the inaugural class range in age from early 20s to 40s, some coming straight from college and others who have worked as nurses or EMTs. All are from Minnesota, and more than half are from cities with fewer than 5,000 people.

The campus will grow to 96 students by 2028. Students will study the same curriculum as those at the main medical school campus but will get hands-on clinical experiences in rural settings. CentraCare is also expanding its residency offerings so medical school graduates can continue their training in greater Minnesota.

“Our students will be able to directly engage in ... rural experiences that you cannot get in an urban environment,” Amsberry said. “This isn’t just niche, right? It’s necessary.”