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UNM Health Sciences Center touts new critical‑care tower, GME growth and research wins while lawmakers press on equity and substance‑use programs
Summary
UNM Health Sciences leaders briefed lawmakers on a new critical‑care tower, a proposed School of Medicine capital project, rising graduate medical education slots, and research focus areas; committee members pressed for diversity targets in BA→MD, questioned an injectable opioid treatment plan and sought data on workforce retention.
Michael Richards, executive vice president and CEO of the UNM Health System, told the Legislative Health & Human Services Committee that the UNM Hospital’s new Critical Care Tower opened the morning before the presentation and will add 96 ICU beds, 18 operating rooms and a new adult emergency department.
Richards said the university is pursuing a large School of Medicine capital project — a proposed 330,000‑square‑foot facility intended to support an incoming medical class of 200 and to expand simulation and clinical teaching space. He framed the capital work as a necessary step to double graduates across health‑profession programs over the next decade so New Mexico can grow its own health workforce.
On graduate medical education, Richards noted growth tied to a Medicaid funding mechanism: New Mexico has expanded GME spots about 24% since 2018 and now has roughly 174 entry resident slots, which the university reports filling. Richards said overall Health Sciences enrollment and graduation counts rose about 16% year‑over‑year.
In a connected research update, Dr. Hengame Racy said research awards for the health sciences show a reduction on reported FY 2025 HSE awards to approximately $228 million, but that accounting issues and award‑timing delays could have produced a counterfactual estimate near $273 million. Racy identified institutional focus areas for 2025 including substance use disorder, environmental health and data science/AI; she also said terminated grants to date total about $4 million and described a rapid‑response team to manage federal funding instability.
Lawmakers pressed UNM on equity and program design. Representative Miguel Garcia raised demographic targets for the BA→MD program and expressed a desire that the program reflect New Mexico’s population. Garcia also alleged that a hospital CEO intervened in a planned injectable opioid treatment demonstration headed by UNM’s opioid team; Richards said he would look into the matter and reiterated institutional support for substance‑use programming. Richards also acknowledged Project ECHO as a statewide tool for clinical extension and said the institution is redirecting $1.5 million from a prior appropriation to support behavioral health reform work.
Why it matters: the capital, workforce and research plans have statewide implications for access to specialty care, residency training capacity and the pipeline of clinicians who may remain in New Mexico. The committee asked for follow‑up data on where graduates go for residencies, how many enter primary care, and results from exit surveys Richards said UNM collects.
What’s next: UNM will provide the committee with requested graduate and residency placement data and other follow‑up materials, and legislators signaled interest in continued oversight of capital funding requests and GME expansion.
