Posted Oct 22, 2025, 2:45 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2013
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ASU medical school scores major gift from longtime physician entrepreneur
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Originally Posted by ASU Diablo
LOL. Not sure where all these doubts and questions are coming from. Pres Crow gets sh*t done, nothing w/ the Medical School was ever pie in the sky.
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Like I said, Dr Crow gets shit done
https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news...-donates-gift-asu-med-school-launch.html
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Dr. John Shufeldt is donating more than $100 million to Arizona State University's new medical school, which will be called John Shufeldt School of Medicine and Medical Engineering.
The gift comes just as the school received preliminary accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education this week, which allows it to start recruiting its first class of 36 students.
"We're so thrilled and honored and excited to be bearing the Shufeldt name," said Dr. Sarah Lisanby, the founding dean of the new school. "The naming gift he dedicated to the school is really making this school possible."
Shufeldt's gift is the second-largest ever received by ASU, after a $115 million donation last month from Rob Walton to establish the School of Conservation Futures.
Holding a medical degree, law degree and MBA, Shufeldt founded NextCare Inc. in 1993, MeMD in 2010 and Tribal Health in 2015. As an emergency medicine doctor since 1987, Shufeldt also was a SWAT doctor for the Phoenix Pollce Department for a dozen years.
In 2021, he formed an investment group called Xcellerant 1 TLC LLC to raise money for promising local health startups.
Shufeldt also was the 2020 Phoenix Business Journal Health Care Hero winner in the innovator category.
"I cannot wait to meet the students who are going to be interviewing and accepted into this program," said Shufeldt, co-founder, president and chief medical officer for VivaMed Biopharma, a Scottsdale-based drug development company. "It's a school I could never have gotten into."
His gift also will support the creation of an endowed professorship for a professor of entrepreneur in medicine, as well as a health-tech venture philanthropy fund that will be operated by the ASU Foundation for a New American University. The university will identify entrepreneurs funded through the endowment, who will be called Xcellerant Ventures Founders.
Shufeldt: 'I would choose medicine 100 out of 100 times again'
When he heard ASU President Michael Crow talk about his plans for a new medical school that will produce medical doctors with an engineering degree, his first thought was, "I know what I want to do for the next 30 years," he said.
Over the years Shufeldt has taught at ASU's law school and its College of Health Solutions.
Now he hopes to teach and mentor these medical/engineering students.
"I want to help them not make all the mistakes I made," he said. "That's a whole course in itself."
An emergency medicine physician since 1989, Shufeldt said it's the best job in the world.
"You get to have an impact oftentimes on the worst day of their life," he said. "Sometimes you save them."
For the past three decades Shufeldt has mentored students, encouraging them to go to medical school.
"I would choose medicine 100 out of 100 times again, hands down," he said. "I was born to practice medicine."
ASU med school located in downtown Phoenix
The new medical and engineering school initially will be located at the Mercado at the southwest corner of Seventh and Van Buren streets in downtown Phoenix until the 200,000-square-foot ASU headquarters building is complete on the Phoenix Bioscience Core campus across the street. Total development costs for that project are expected somewhere between $200 million and $300 million.
Groundbreaking on the headquarters is expected to begin in spring 2026, with completion in 2028.
When Shufeldt thinks about his name on the new building, he said he's honored to be part of a school that will produce physicians that are going to change health care in Arizona and in the world.
"I’m honored to contribute, even in a small way, to a medical school that will shape the next generation of physician-leaders," Shufeldt said. "I have no doubt that ASU’s medical school is on track to become the best in the world, producing doctors who will lead the industry and drive meaningful change in healthcare."
The donor for this new type of medical/engineering school couldn't be more perfect, said Todd LaPorte, CEO of HonorHealth, which is partnering with ASU on the new school.
"He's a combination of being a doctor and entrepreneur and innovative thinker," LaPorte said. "That's exactly what the school of medicine and medical engineering is all about."
LaPorte said he looks forward to recruiting these graduates to HonorHealth.
"Clearly these students are going to have a very direct line of sight at how we do things at HonorHealth — that will be to our advantage," LaPorte said.
The goal is to keep these graduates practicing in Arizona.
"As we've learned, based on where they perform their residencies tends to correlate most highly of where they end up deciding to practice — more so than where they graduated from," LaPorte said.
In addition to going through clinical rotations at HonorHealth's hospitals, urgent care centers and medical practice group, these students also will get an opportunity to gain hands-on experience at HonorHealth's research institute, where clinical trials are performed.
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