Medical School Affiliated With HCA Healthcare Welcomes Its First Class

A new medical school established in partnership with U.S. healthcare giant HCA Healthcare has welcomed its first class.

The 50 students of the inaugural class of the Thomas F. Frist, Jr. College of Medicine at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee received their white coats last week, according to a university press release.

The HCA-affiliated medical school is the third medical school in Nashville and the sixth in Tennessee, according to The Tennessean.

The school said it received 1,368 applications for the class of 2028, which has a median MCAT score of 509 and a median GPA of 3.64. Most of the students are female (54%) and there are 24 languages spoken among them.

Four students received rural community scholarships, with the intention of practicing in rural areas after graduation, according to the release.

Plans for the medical school were first announced in October 2020, with HCA’s Nashville-based TriStar Health slated to provide the necessary “clinical elements” to pursue accreditation. TriStar Health has 68 physician practices, 15 urgent care centers, 11 hospitals, six surgery centers, and four freestanding emergency departments across Tennessee and southern Kentucky.

TriStar Health would provide third-year medical students with core clinical clerkships, and fourth-year medical students with clinical elective rotations, according to a press release at the time. HCA would also “provide a pathway” to graduate medical education opportunities and “support existing members of the medical staff who may be interested in faculty positions.”

“HCA Healthcare will bring world-class expertise to Belmont’s College of Medicine, offering our students extraordinary faculty instructors and a pathway to residency and clinical placements,” former Belmont President Bob Fisher said at the time.

Anderson Spickard, MD, was named dean of the college of medicine in 2023, after serving in the role of interim dean for about a year.

The medical school builds on a “lengthy legacy of connections between Belmont and HCA Healthcare,” the press release stated, tracing back to entrepreneur and HCA co-founder Jack Massey, a long-time supporter of the private Christian university. Other HCA co-founders were Thomas Frist Jr., MD, and his father, Thomas Frist Sr., MD.

HCA launched in 1968, and is currently one of the largest healthcare companies in the U.S., operating 186 hospitals and more than 2,000 sites of care. Its 2023 revenue was $65 billion, and its net income was $5.2 billion.

HCA also calls itself the “largest sponsor of graduate medical education programs” in the country, with some 60 teaching hospitals and 5,429 residents and fellows in 337 programs, according to 2022 data.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the $180 million, 198,000-square-foot facility was held in April.

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