That proposal, a Waikato University initiative which dated from the term of the previous National-led government, was jettisoned by Dr Clark yesterday.
He said no money had been allocated to the proposed school, which would have cost up to a quarter of a billion dollars to set-up and operate.
The lead article in last week's edition of the New Zealand Medical Journal featured an alternative proposal, driven by the University of Otago, University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology (AUT), for a virtual rural health campus.
Today one of the article's authors, Otago public health professor Peter Crampton, said Dr Clark's statement yesterday did not also mean the death knell for the virtual campus proposal.
"The University of Otago remains committed to the collaborative proposal for a National Interprofessional School of Rural Health,'' Prof Crampton said.
"The difficulties of attracting and retaining rural health professionals are well known and we are committed to working collaboratively with our partners, including rural communities, to address these issues to help improve New Zealand's health system.''
The virtual campus proposal would see the establishment of an interprofessional community of rural health academics from across New Zealand, with the intention of boosting the rural health workforce.
In recent years rural practices have struggled to attract staff, with resulting drops in health statistics in country areas.
Yesterday Dr Clark said he had asked the Ministry of Health to work on projects to tackle access to health services in rural areas.
"By itself, just training more undergraduate doctors is not the answer.
"We need a more comprehensive approach to attract, support and sustain the health professionals that care for rural people.''
