NORTH HAVEN

In a year, Quinnipiac University expects to open the third medical school in the state to help ease a dramatic shortage of primary care doctors and to create a new brand of physician a doctor comfortable in a collaborative team of professionals.

To outsiders, Quinnipiac might seem an unlikely place for one of the 18 new medical schools planned around the country. But those familiar with Quinnipiac's expansion, from regional college to higher-profile university, as well as its health-care focused programs see the medical school as a logical next step.

Dr. Bruce Koeppen, who was dean of academic affairs at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine when he read about Quinnipiac's plan, says his first reaction was: "Who do they think they are? There's no way they could possibly do this.'"

But within months Koeppen was named dean of Quinnipiac's nascent medical school and supervisor of the $100 million effort to get it built, staffed and accredited. He is particularly excited about building "a medical school from scratch" that will train physicians with the latest in facilities, curriculum and approach.

"We've hired people Many had wanted to make changes in the medical schools where they were and were frustrated that nothing happened. Here we have a clean slate and no barriers in the way," said Koeppen, whose office is not from the construction site.

The university is renovating a former Blue Cross Anthem buildling on its North Haven campus for the school, aimed at producing primary care physicians who are in short supply. Even in its design, the new school hopes to foster a team approach by ensuring that medical students and the students in other health programs cross paths and share common space.

In many schools, doctors are trained to be "the captain of the ship or the pilot of the airplane and everyone is supposed to obey them. There is a lot of evidence out there that you get better outcomes, better patient safety, if the individuals that are taking care of the patient are really working as a team," said Koeppen, 60.

"The analogy is a pit crew for NASCAR," Koeppen said. "Where you have a group of people with very specific talents and knowledge and expertise on the pit crew coming together to take care of the car."

The Frank H. Netter M.D. School of Medicine, as Quinnipiac's new school is called, is part of a wave of medical school development that began in the past decade, after a period from the early 1980s to 2000 when there were essentially no new medical schools.

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Primary Care To Be Job One For New Medical School