This story was originally published July 17, 2026 by the Nashville Banner. Sign up for their newsletter.
Belmont University’s fledgling medical school has hit a major stumbling block, just as it prepares to welcome its third cohort of students to campus.
The Thomas F. Frist Medical School will not advance to the next level of accreditation for at least two years after being placed on probation by the Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME), the national body that oversees medical education nationwide. The school is now offering refunds to students who wish to disenroll if they make their intentions known by Aug. 25. In a letter to the Banner on Friday, Belmont said the refund policy was not new.
The news means that the school’s first class of students will not know the outcome of the accreditation process until spring of their fourth year.
Sources tell the Banner students were informed of the accreditation pause Thursday afternoon, an hour after faculty learned of the decision from Dean Anderson Spickard and other administrators. The Banner was also told that Spickard and others knew of the decision ahead of Thursday, perhaps as many as 10 days before the announcement.
An evaluation team from LCME visited the campus in February, and the move to the next level of provisional accreditation was expected in late June. LCME does not publicly share specifics of its decisions, and Belmont did not elaborate on the deficiencies.
“Since providing the last round of data to the LCME in November 2025, we have already implemented several enhancements to student responsiveness, institutional oversight and academic experience, and we are seeing encouraging results,” read a statement attributed to Belmont Communications. “Under the LCME's review cycle, our next scheduled site visit will take place in 2028, which represents the earliest opportunity to remove probation and move toward the next accreditation status.”
In an email to faculty and staff, Spickard acknowledged the news as “disappointing” and noted a number of changes the school is making, including adding a new associate dean for research.
“We satisfactorily met the standards for faculty size and recruitment, and LCME will continue to monitor this progress as we intentionally grow to meet the needs of current and future students,” Spickard wrote.
In a Q&A to the students, Belmont said that the admissions process will continue as it normally would and that tuition would not change to pay for remedies suggested during the accreditation evaluation, though the school did acknowledge that students may be reconsidering their enrollment.
Q: Should I be concerned about remaining here?
A: Concern is a reasonable reaction when difficult news is shared. We want to reiterate that your education continues uninterrupted, the institution has a specific plan to resolve the cited deficiencies and we will tell you immediately if anything changes that affects you personally.
Q: What assurances can you provide to students?
A: Belmont remains committed to providing an outstanding medical education. Your educational program and progression toward graduation are not changing, and we are committed to communicating openly and promptly as we implement our corrective action plan. If anything arises that could affect your educational path, you will hear it directly from us first.
A year ago, the Banner reported on what some local physicians called an “alarming” rate of turnover at the new medical school. Some regarded Belmont's structure as unique and somewhat financially risky because it is not connected to a specific hospital, like Vanderbilt, and does not yet have a pipeline for research or clinical practice.
Even before the first class completed a year of instruction, the founding dean, recruited from Meharry, had left for health reasons, and sources told the Banner that 10 of the 16 original faculty had departed. Belmont revised and disputed turnover figures in a series of interviews, ultimately saying last summer that 26 out of 100 faculty and staff had left the institution.
Though the school carries the name of Nashville physician and philanthropist Thomas F. Frist, Jr, according to Dean Spickard, it was an honorary designation and no money exchanged hands for the naming “rights.”
There are currently three medical schools on probation according to the LCME website, including Meharry Medical College, one of three medical schools in Nashville. The LCME had not updated Belmont's status as of this writing. Seven medical schools are designated as having achieved preliminary accreditation, including Frist.
Belmont declined a request for an interview.
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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