- BYU submitted a nearly 900-page accreditation application to open School of Medicine by fall 2027.
- The application heavily focused on Jesus Christ, unique even compared to other faith-based schools.
- Nearly 200 people helped build and submit the application.
The deadline was a beast.
If BYU wanted to keep alive its hopes to open the doors for its planned School of Medicine in fall 2027, it had to submit its application for accreditation by Aug. 1.
A team of dozens of experts began in January. In fewer than seven months, they compiled a nearly 900-page data control instrument — the technical term for the application — and sent it off on July 31.
Mission accomplished.
“I think it was impossible, if it weren’t for God,” founding dean Mark Ott told the Deseret News. “The miracle of that many people doing that much work in that short of time is astounding.”
The Liaison Committee on Medical Education will meet in October to review BYU’s application. If the application is approved, the committee will schedule a site visit in Provo next spring or summer. If all goes well, the LCME could grant BYU preliminary accreditation in October 2026.
That would clear the way for a fall 2027 founding class of 60 students, the maximum the LCME allows for a new school.
It all started with a door stopper of an application, one that is highly unusual, BYU officials say they have been told.
Ott, BYU President Shane Reese and others have been open about that.
Reese told faculty and staff during BYU’s annual University Conference in late August that the application was a milestone representing a steady upward climb for the entire university.
“The vision for all we must become is lofty and at times can seem intimidating, even daunting, but we need not feel discouraged in our pursuit of excellence. The Lord is in this work,” he said.
He literally is on the pages of BYU’s application.
“As you read that document, it is all about Jesus Christ and his mission of healing and lifting the nations of the world, and that is the mission of the school of medicine,” said Caleb Frischknecht, general counsel for the School of Medicine.
He said BYU hired an outside consultant to help its team understand the LCME’s expectations during the accreditation process. The consultant said that for accreditors, each proposed new medical school’s application is largely similar, even for faith-based or parochial schools.
By contrast, the consultant said BYU’s focus on Christ throughout its data control instrument made its presentation “one of one,” Frischknecht said during a BYU Education Week presentation by university attorneys.
Ott said the application is both highly technical and routine.
“It ranges from whether we have lockers for students, something as mundane as that, to issues about the curriculum and educational philosophy and buildings and finances,” he said. “They care a lot about faculty facilities and finances. Those are big areas for them, which they should be.”
Nearly 200 people helped during the seven-month lift to build and submit the data control instrument, said Rich Hatch, an attorney in BYU’s Office of General Counsel.
“There are 15 working groups working through all the different issues that you have to deal with to become an accredited medical school,” he said at Education Week, “and this involves 152 individuals.”
About 85 are BYU or Intermountain Health employees, and over 65 are volunteers from around the country, Hatch said.
“They’re volunteering their time and expertise to help start this school,” he said.
Ott said the 15 working groups assembled and turned over information about their areas of expertise by May 19. An accreditation group then took several weeks to hammer the full document into shape.
That group handed the work off to an outside team of accreditation consultants for three weeks, then BYU applied their suggestions, Ott said.
Ott is deferential to the LCME when he talks about whether the School of Medicine could open in 2027.
“That’s the earliest it could possibly be,” he said. “It could be 2028 or 2029. There’s no definitive start date set at this point.”
BYU has to prepare for any of those contingencies, so it has embarked on hiring and making plans for a new medical building.
If the LCME schedules a site visit next year and then grants BYU preliminary accreditation in fall 2026, the school then would begin to recruit its first class, Frischknecht said.
“If you’re watching carefully, we’re in the process of hiring our (first) faculty, and we’ll be hiring other faculty members early next year as well,” he said. “The hiring plan is aggressive for us to be able to open the doors of the medical school in August of 2027.”
Final accreditation cannot be granted until the first class graduates, which at the earliest would be 2031, Frischknecht said.
BYU announced on May 19 that it would construct a new building for the medical school on the site of the old Provo High School campus. The university purchased the property in 2016 and renamed it West Campus.
Heavy machines recently began knocking down buildings on the south end of the old high school.
“We’re working right now with the architects and the construction companies to decide on the site and the type of building we’re planning, the classrooms in it, the facilities of it, the anatomy lab, everything that goes into a school of medicine building,” Ott said.
The data control instrument submitted by BYU also outlines how BYU will provide clinical training to its medical students.
The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which sponsors BYU, said when it announced the School of Medicine that it would not build its own hospital or hospital system.
That means the school must have affiliations to provide students with opportunities for clinical rotations and residency.
BYU is working out the details of clinical affiliations with Intermountain Health, the University of Utah, the Utah Department of Health, the Utah Department of Corrections and others, Hatch said.
“This is another unique characteristic about the new school of medicine,” he said. “We will not have a medical center or adjacent health system, at least not for the foreseeable future. Instead, BYU will rely on clinical partners for the clinical settings students need to get training.”
Ott said the process has been amazing.
“It’s great to be part of BYU,” said Ott, who came to the university from Intermountain Healthcare and earlier stops at Johns Hopkins and Harvard. “This is what the Lord has BYU do. We are unique.”