On July 14, 48 students walked through the doors of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Ark. to become its inaugural class. Some came from neighboring cities, others from urban centers in Michigan and New York. Almost all had a choice in where they could become doctors but took a chance on the new school because of its unique approach to rethinking medical education.
00:00When the richest woman in the world decides to reimagine the U.S. healthcare system, people listen.
00:06Alice Walton, who is the world's richest woman, very down-to-earth.
00:11And when I asked her about why a medical school, she told me about her own personal experience with the healthcare system.
00:18She was involved in a really bad car accident and had, for almost a dozen years afterwards, was in and out of hospitals.
00:25And that was her first and very personal look at how really broken the healthcare system is.
00:32Our current healthcare system is really reactionary.
00:36People have to get sick before you see a doctor.
00:39And that's when doctors want to see you because that's how they get paid.
00:43It's how the insurance companies, you know, get involved.
00:46The Alice Walton School of Medicine, whose acronym, by the way, is awesome, is intentionally created to focus on prevention.
00:55What she's trying to do is educate a new generation of doctors that really listens and considers the whole patient.
01:02I think it's just also rethinking fundamentally the role of the healer in society.
01:08Over 2,000 people applied to become the first students at this medical school.
01:1448 were accepted.
01:16Alice will be paying for the tuition for the first five classes of students that come through the school.
01:22And the reason for that is to remove the burden on the students of, first of all, deciding to become a doctor so that once they graduate, they are really able to focus and to go to areas where they are needed the most without having to worry about having to make enough money to pay off their debt.
01:41So this is an interesting model that we're seeing a lot of wealthy philanthropists adopt.
01:48The question is how much of this is actually translating into doctors actually going into underserved areas.
01:54I think what Alice hopes is that with the really intentional curriculum, too, that the approach there will really motivate a lot of the students to really go into those underserved areas.
02:07I'm hearing both from people who want to teach there, you know, and sending in resumes, as well as students who are interested in learning more about it.
02:17So I think the message of the school is definitely resonating.
02:19Instead of wringing your hands and saying, you know, this system is broken, it's not working, it is an effort to change.
