Photo by Tom Jenz
Dr. John Raymond
Dr. John Raymond
The Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) is Wisconsin’s only private medical school with an operating budget of over $1.6 billion. More than half of the physicians practicing in the state is an MCW alumnus or a graduate of the physician residency training programs.
The Medical College originated with the founding of the Wisconsin College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1893. In 1907, Milwaukee Medical College became the Medical Department of the newly chartered Marquette University. In 1967, Marquette University terminated its relationship, and the department continued as a private medical school. It changed its name to the Medical College of Wisconsin in 1970 and kept growing from there. By 2024, MCW has become the third largest private medical school in the country,
Since 2014, John Raymond, 68, has been MCW’s president and CEO. He has overseen the remarkable growth of the institution. His life story is classically American, how hard work and education pays off in the fullness of time.
Raymond grew up in Akron, Ohio. “My dad built tires for Goodyear, and worked two jobs,” Raymond told me. “My mom stayed home to take care of us four kids. Dad put his children and our education first and foremost. We went to Catholic schools.”
When Raymond was 11, he spent eight weeks in bed with mononucleosis and got to know his family doctor. “I was inspired by him,” he said. “He had a solo practice, and he connected with people. I made my mind up I wanted to be a doctor.”
For our conversation, we met in an MCW conference room at the modern massive HUB building in Wauwatosa where doctors are trained and classes conducted. Raymond is vividly smart yet humble, a cross between an expert in medicine and an executive in management.
What was your educational path to becoming a physician?
I went to Ohio State when Woody Hayes was the football coach, majored in psychology, then stayed at Ohio State for medical school.
Where did you do your internship and residency?
I matriculated at Duke University where I encountered old fashioned internal medicine training. For three years, I was on call every other night. Out of 48 hours, I spent 12 hours at home. I got to see the evolution of disease and treatment at a high-end hospital.
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You became a nephrologist, specializing in kidney cell function and research. Why did you choose this field?
Duke had the best cardiology program in the country, but I would’ve had to wait a year to get in. I was inspired by how smart nephrologists are. It is mysterious how fluids and electrolytes work in the body. Also, I was interested in the new dialysis treatments back then. Kidneys are the only organ that can be replaced long term with a machine. In the U.S. currently, there are 700,000 people on dialysis.
What were the steps that led you to come to the Medical College of Wisconsin as president?
My plan was to go back to Akron and become an internal medicine doctor. But when I was interviewing for my internship at Duke, this faculty member, Bob Lefkowitz, a young clinician scientist, hired me to work in his lab. Bob won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2013. He showed me how to do high end research, and I spent seven years in his lab—all the way up until I began my career as a faculty member at Duke. I got the research bug and had won a number of grants and written many articles. For five years, I ran the dialysis section and the hypertension program at the Durham, North Carolina VA Medical Center.
Where did you go from there?
I moved onto the Medical University of South Carolina to hold a professorship. That was 1996. I spent 14 years there, and I ended up running the research program at the Charleston Veterans Affairs Medical Center, 100 faculty members working with grants. And I managed the research building. Eventually, I ended up as the number two person running the university. I was the provost, managing the faculty, the academic enterprise, and the research.
Then, how did you end up in Milwaukee?
I wanted to move up in my field, and there was an opportunity here in Milwaukee, and I was hired as president of the Medical College of Wisconsin. That was 2010. I really came to like Milwaukee. Beautiful city on Lake Michigan.
You started out as a goal of being a family doctor, and through years of training, you ended up being a high-end manager of a medical college. Was that an adjustment for you?
Thank you for asking that question, Tom. It was an evolutionary process for me. Slowly, I began to like administrative and leadership work. When I came to MCW, I gradually gave up research to just do the management work. I decided my scholarship work would be devoted to academic medicine issues, changing the way we deliver medical education. The President of MCW has to manage the short term and immediate needs of people and programs. I have to finance the programs, advance people, and provide environments for them to be successful. I also have to plan for the future, five, 10, 20 years from now.
MCW is Wisconsin’s only private medical school with an operating budget of approximately $1.6 billion. More than half of the physicians practicing in Wisconsin is an alumnus of MCW or the residency training programs. What is the difference between a private medical school and a public school such as UW Madison’s medical school?
Curricula are pretty much the same, but the funding models are different. State of Wisconsin provides baseline funding to the UW medical school. We at MCW get some funding from the state but not a whole baseline. The majority of the funding for both UW and MCW comes from the work our faculty clinicians do. As for MCW, about 75% of our funding comes from clinical operations. Another 15% to 20% comes from research, and the rest comes from tuition and philanthropy investments. Tuition is only about 4% of our revenue. But we have a great relationship with the UW Medical School, working together on many things.
Your three primary affiliate health systems are Froedtert Health, Children’s Wisconsin and the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center. How do you go about working with those systems?
We are four separate entities, our own individual organizations. But what knits us together is that the MCW faculty provides nearly all of the clinical care in those hospitals. At Froedtert, you have to be an MCW faculty member to work there, and we co-brand with Froedtert. At Children’s Wisconsin, MCW provides 99% of the clinical care, but does not co-brand with Children’s Wisconsin. At the VA Medical Center, 90% of their faculty are MCW people. Our interns, residents and fellows work at all three medical centers. I still work at the VA as a volunteer. I’ve been volunteering at VA hospitals for 42 years.
MCW has addressed Wisconsin’s pending physician shortage through the establishment of regional medical school campuses. Where are those campuses and how do they work with MCW in Milwaukee?
In 2011, there were workforce studies that showed a shortage of about 100,000-125,000 physicians in the country. Wisconsin had a significant shortage. But this was more of a maldistribution. We have plenty of doctors in Milwaukee and Madison, but there was a shortage in northern Wisconsin. Our approach was to recruit students from rural Wisconsin and surrounding states who want to become rural doctors. Only about three percent of our MCW graduates practice up north. We decided to set up regional medical campuses, and we ended up with two campuses, the northeast and central regions. De Pere and Wausau. It took us three years to get accredited, and we matriculated our first students in 2015 and 2016. Class sizes are small, about 20 to 25 students for each campus, but more in Green Bay.
You’ve had about eight years to evaluate the regional campuses. How are they doing?
The results are working beyond our wildest dreams. Some motivated students took a graduated program of three years instead of four. After that, the students spend about three years in residency. Then, they decide where they will practice. So far, more than half of the MCW graduate doctors from regional campuses are coming back to practice in rural settings.
I believe you also added a School of Pharmacy not long ago. Am I right on that?
Yes. The School of Pharmacy started in 2017. In Wisconsin, pharmacists can do any task allocated to them by a physician. We can train pharmacists to specialize in high end quaternary care like cancer care, pediatrics and surgery, or who choose to work in a rural community where there might not be physicians.
How many current students do you have enrolled in the MCW Medical, Graduate, and Pharmacy Schools?
Our medical school has about 1,100 students. We are the third largest private medical school in the country. But overall, we have 1,700 total students including the pharmacy school and our graduate program. We also have 1,000 physician residents.
You are trying to be more of a presence in the Black community. MCW has collaborated with the Greater Milwaukee Foundation and Royal Capital Group to build the ThriveOn King building on King Drive near North Avenue in Bronzeville. The administrative offices have recently been completed. What part of MCW is located in the new building?
MCW has about 300 people in that new building. They are from ten centers and departments. Our idea was to gather all of our community-based faculty, staff, and learners in one place. We’ve always had a presence in the Black community, but when we moved to Wauwatosa in 1978, we kind of lost that connection. After the Sherman Park riots in 2016, I met with Black community leaders and asked what we could do. They told me MCW needs to be more visible in the Black community and have a permanent presence. We aligned with the Greater Milwaukee Foundation and African American Kevin Newell and his Royal Capital Group development company to build the ThriveOn King building on ML King Drive in the central city. It has turned into a beautiful venue, full of energy and activity. People of all colors and backgrounds are working there.
Will medical students be attending classes there and living in the apartment units in the ThriveOn King building?
There will be 90 apartment units. Five of those will be for MCW medical students under our Health Equity Scholars program. They will be people who want to serve in under resourced urban areas. And they have full ride scholarships.
Also in that building is the Malaika Early Childhood Learning Center and Kinship Community Kitchens that serves healthy food.
That’s right, and there is the Versiti Blood Center, which has created jobs for people working in that field. Phlebotomists are being trained in their offices. There are blood donations coming from the African American people living in that area.
What are the challenges ahead for the MCW? What does the future look like?
The future is bright. Our biggest challenge is we have more ideas and more potential than we can possibly choose from.
Health care is an exploding industry. It just keeps on growing.
The hardest challenge is to provide immediately accessible high-quality health care at an affordable price, and that is America’s challenge.
