A Meridian-based medical school — which is seeking to build its partnership with Idaho — is pairing up with a university in the Midwest.

The Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine on Tuesday announced a “strategic partnership” with Concordia University Wisconsin. The partnership could lead to ICOM’s first satellite campus, an instructional site on Concordia’s Mequon, Wisconsin, campus.

The ICOM-Concordia agreement is effective immediately, and it will “facilitate” Concordia students’ enrollment in ICOM’s medical school programs, ICOM said in a news release Tuesday.

“By working together, we are not only expanding opportunities for aspiring medical students but also helping to address critical physician workforce needs in our communities,” ICOM President Tracy Farnsworth said in the release.

In an interview Wednesday, Farnsworth said the partnership will not affect ICOM’s Idaho operations. As a private college, ICOM recruits most of its students from outside Idaho.

And while the satellite campus would be a first for ICOM, Farnsworth noted that the University of Washington has used a similar model to build its WWAMI medical partnership, with branches in member states of Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho.

“It’s not uncommon … to have a hub-and-spoke philosophy,” Farnsworth told EdNews.

In the release, ICOM said the partnership will expand its ties with hospitals in the Midwest, providing its students with more clinical opportunities in the region.

In-state clinical partnerships are a bottleneck in Idaho’s medical education system, and an impediment to addressing a longstanding doctors’ shortage. Idaho ranks last in the nation in physicians per capita.

ICOM is lobbying the state to subsidize student seats at the college. ICOM has said it would reserve in-state clinical assignments for Idaho students, while sending its out-of-state students to out-of-state clinical sites.

But despite lengthy discussions before the 2026 session, legislators did not establish state-funded seats at ICOM. The Legislature also did not expand partnerships with medical schools at the University of Washington and the University of Utah.

ICOM is a private, for-profit medical school. While ICOM is not currently for sale, Idaho State University and some legislators have voiced interest in a purchase.