Care Package
Residency program faculty member Dr. Glen Monteiro with third-year medical student Alex Anderson.
This June, eight medical school graduates will move to town for three years of family medicine training and to help improve access to primary care. If all goes well, some won’t ever want to leave.
Story by Dick Baltus Photos by Thomas Boyd
The medical reinforcements are coming, and the timing couldn’t be better — even if they’re arriving a little later than expected.
Originally scheduled to be up and running last year, the new Roseburg Family Medicine Residency program that will bring eight new physicians to Roseburg each year to train experienced some unanticipated, but ultimately serendipitous, delays. The extra start-up time allowed organizers to align with Douglas County’s largest Federally Qualified Health Center, Aviva Health, which provides significant benefits, including previously unavailable access to important funding sources.
As a result, the program, a collaborative effort between Aviva Health, CHI Mercy Health and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, will start on a solid foundation of funding that includes a $5.4 million Teacher Health Center grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration, a $1 million workforce grant from the State of Oregon and an additional $750,000 in federal funding secured by Mercy Foundation.
“The financial piece was the biggest hurdle we had to overcome,” says Brian Eichman, operations director for Centennial Medical Group and a member of the residency program’s organizing team. “I’m not sure we could have gotten off the ground without the grants we were able to get.”
“The nice thing about having them for three years is that’s long enough for them to put down roots in our community.” — Dr. Chip Taylor
This June, eight new recent medical school graduates will move to Roseburg to train with program staff and provide patient care alongside local physicians and providers. They’ll train in the community for three years, helping fill the gaps created locally by a significant shortage of family medicine providers while learning about the advantages of practicing in a small community. The hope is the experience will entice many of them to settle in Roseburg when they’re ready to set up their own practices.
“The nice thing about having them for three years is that’s long enough for them to put down roots in our community,” says Dr. Chip Taylor, a family physician at Aviva Health and residency program director.
Studies have shown that about half of all physicians establish their practices within a 100-mile radius of where they are trained. That statistic has helped lead to physician shortages in most small Oregon communities, given the majority of providers are trained in Portland at Oregon Health and Science University.
Currently the only other training programs in the state outside of Portland are in Corvallis and Klamath Falls, but both of those communities have been successful keeping many of the physicians trained there close by.
To increase the odds of achieving the same results in Roseburg, residency program officials focused much of their recruitment efforts on graduates of osteopathic medicine programs in Lebanon and Yakima, Taylor says. “If you’ve made the decision to train in Lebanon or Yakima, (philosophically) you’re halfway to Roseburg,” he says.
Residency program director Dr. Chip Taylor assists fourth-year medical student Ashley Sparks.
The group also gave special consideration to applicants who hail from smaller communities, says Family Medicine Residency Operations Director Desiree Inglis. “Our thinking was people who grew up in medically underserved communities and may have experienced their parents having a hard time getting timely care may be predisposed to want to practice in a small community where they could help improve access to care.”
Members of the Resident Selection Committee that interviewed program applicants also were looking for individuals who would be good fits for Roseburg, adds Aviva Health CEO K.C. Bolton. “During our interviews it was pretty clear who those individuals were; you can sense whose values were aligned with the community’s,” he says.
The team, which was scheduled to learn the names of the program’s first-year residents in mid-March, was unanimous in the belief that it will be an outstanding group. “We attracted a good group of applicants,” Bolton says.
The residents will go through an orientation program June 15-26, then show up for their first day of training June 29. “They’ll spend time seeing their own patients at Aviva, then every four weeks they’ll be at Mercy rotating through different specialty areas,” says Dr. Heidi Beery, family medicine physician at Aviva Health and associate program director of the residency, adding they will also spend time at the VA. “Their patient panels will start small, but will gradually grow over time.”
As the number of patients the residents are caring for increases — and with the addition of eight additional physicians in each of the next two years – the residency program will be helping improve access to primary care in the short term with the potential for even greater long-term results.
