PASADENA — Tuition will be waived for the first five classes of students at the new Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine in Southern California.
Kaiser Permanente announced Tuesday that the school being built in Pasadena has received preliminary accreditation and it will begin accepting applications in June for the first class in summer 2020.
Students in the school’s first five classes will have tuition waived for the full four years.
Pasadena was announced as the site for the school in 2016.
Clinical education will primarily take place in the greater Los Angeles area in Kaiser Permanente hospitals and clinics and in partnered community health centers.

Curriculum Will Address Evolving Health Care

“We’ve had the opportunity to build a medical school from the ground up and have drawn from evidence-based educational approaches to develop a state-of-the-art school on the forefront of medical education, committed to preparing students to provide outstanding patient care in our nation’s complex and evolving health care system,” said Mark A. Schuster, MD, PhD, founding dean and CEO of the school.
First-year students will work with primary care preceptors all year, giving them the opportunity to form relationships with patients and clinical mentors over time, Kaiser Permanente said in a news release.
Second-year students will continue in their primary care LICs and will also participate in LICs in obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry, and surgery.
Third- and fourth-year clinical education is dedicated to the students’ exploration of potential specialties and other areas of interest. The school expects that graduates will enter residency programs in a range of specialties at institutions across the nation.