Osteopathic medical school planned for Collier County

A four-year osteopathic medical school designed to help address Southwest Florida’s physician shortage is planned for Collier County through a collaboration with Naples Comprehensive Health.

The proposed Naples College of Osteopathic Medicine, to be built and operated by Tampa-based Bay College of Osteopathic Medicine LLC, will occupy more than 5 acres off Rattlesnake Hammock Road east of Collier Boulevard. The 108,000-square-foot facility is projected to cost $170 million.

Developed by Florida entrepreneur and philanthropist Dr. Kiran C. Patel’s team, the school will accommodate about 400 students and graduate roughly 100 new physicians each year.

On Nov. 10, Collier County commissioners unanimously approved a $6 million economic development agreement with Bay College. The county said Bay College had been scouting sites for a sister school to complement its recently completed Orlando College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Phil Zaveri, director of the nonprofit Dr. Kiran C. Patel Institute for Graduate Medical Education and a co-director of the Patel Family Office in Tampa, told commissioners before the vote, “our goal is to be here in Collier County” after looking at about eight other sites.

“It’s a little bit of an expensive endeavor from a land standpoint,” Zaveri said. “So, our goal is to be here regardless, but the incentive definitely helps move this forward.”

The Patel Family Office later confirmed it has “effectively ruled out any sites outside of Collier County.”

County officials estimate the project will employ about 325 construction workers and create more than 100 “high-wage paying” jobs. Bay College also agreed to offer at least 20 scholarships to Collier County residents.

“The overall economic impact to Collier County through this agreement is close to $2 billion over the next 20 years,” said Cormac Giblin, the county’s director of housing policy and economic development.

The site already has proper zoning and is considered “shovel-ready,” Giblin said. The Naples College of Osteopathic Medicine would become the fourth medical school under Patel Global University.

Dr. Robert Hasty, dean and chief academic officer of the Orlando College of Osteopathic Medicine, said the school will help address the “significant” physician shortage in the region. Construction is planned to begin in spring 2026 and be completed by the end of 2027. The inaugural class is expected to start in fall 2028, with graduation in 2032.

“We’re going to focus on trying to give a lot of local kids opportunities to go to medical school,” Hasty said. “Hopefully, they will all stay for training here in Southwest Florida, particularly with NCH, and hopefully they’ll come and practice here in the years ahead.”

Matt Heinle, chief strategy officer and general counsel for NCH, said that the system’s medical staff, board and administration has had input on the proposed school and how an affiliation would work.

“It would be a very close collaboration because NCH would be the primary training site for the medical students in years three and four of their curriculum,” Heinle said. “As they do their clinical rotations, whether it’s in OB/GYN, pediatrics, behavioral health, etc., NCH would be the primary training site — but not exclusive — because of the close proximity between our hospitals and the medical school.”

Heinle added that members of NCH’s medical staff also would have the option of being adjunct professors, guest lecturers or preceptors — physicians who are training medical students during their clinical rotations — creating what he called “a lot of synergy” between the medical school and the health care system.

“One of our primary goals is to have these medical students interested in staying in Naples long term, becoming residents and fellows at NCH, whether to be critical care doctors or pulmonologists or cardiologists, for example, and then stay in our community for their career,” he said. “It’s definitely a long view that we see here in terms of the benefit to the community, from bringing young people interested in the medical sciences to be educated here, to be trained here and then to stay here to take care of patients.”

Dr. Wolfgang Gilliar will be founding dean of the proposed Naples College of Osteopathic Medicine and said the building will be “a modern educational facility that really helps the learner to become the best future physician.”

Gilliar, who is the immediate past dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Touro University in Nevada, said Naples would be an ideal location for the new school.

“It is an absolute opportunity where the forward-thinking medical school that we want to be is coming together with a community and having the partnership with NCH,” Gilliar said. “There was such a good symbiotic relationship and people thought this was the right place to build this school. The excellent relationship that can be built between a medical school and the hospital system is absolutely ideal for the location.”

And while training and retaining physicians who will want to stay long-term in Naples and Southwest Florida is one objective, Gilliar said the overarching goal “is to make and produce very caring, compassionate physicians who will actually take everything in, including technology, but more importantly will lead with compassion and understanding of what it takes to be there for patients.”