Medical Education: Provider-school initiative tackles doctor shortage

Springfield’s two largest health systems and the University of Missouri School of Medicine in Columbia are bolstering their existing partnership to deal with a looming physician shortage through an initiative announced in January.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the U.S. population is growing and aging faster than new physicians are graduating from medical schools.

In Missouri, the Department of Health and Senior Services estimates that at least 99 out of 115 jurisdictions already are facing physician shortages.

DHS spokesman Kit Wagar said there are two kinds of shortages: a geographic shortage where there are not enough primary care providers to serve a population, and a low-income shortage where there are not enough providers willing to serve low-income or Medicaid patients.  

Most of southwest Missouri, including Greene and Christian counties, falls into the low-income shortage category, Wagar said, but other counties, such as Stone and Douglas, have geographic shortages.

St. John’s and CoxHealth already partner with MU to give medical students clinical experiences in rural areas, which are particularly vulnerable to shortages. Since 2005, nearly 50 MU students have trained in rural areas in southwest Missouri through that program, according to a St. John’s news release.

The new initiative will look specifically at strategies and resources to encourage enrollment in medical school and ways to expand educational opportunities at both systems’ hospitals and clinics, bringing urban settings into the mix.

“We’ve not had (many) opportunities for students to have clinical training opportunities in the city of Springfield itself,” said Dr. Linda Headrick, senior associate dean for education and faculty development at MU’s School of Medicine. “We see that as a potential area for excellent learning opportunities given the high quality of care that’s given by both of those health care organizations.”

Steve Edwards, CoxHealth executive vice president and chief operating officer, said the addition of urban experience will create a new synergy for students.

“There’s a lot more patients in Springfield than Columbia,” he said.

Although a timeline has not been determined, both hospitals plan to work with MU toward a sustainable satellite medical school program with 30 students per year, focusing on the last two years of a medical student’s education. That number represents an increase of nearly 30 percent to MU’s normal yearly medical school enrollment of 96, Headrick said.

“Our ultimate goal is to have an extension of University of Missouri’s medical school in southwest Missouri,” said St. John’s President and CEO Jon Swope.

Though the total cost of the initiative hasn’t been determined, Headrick emphasized that funding will have to be identified before a timeline can be set for moving forward on tasks such as expanding classroom space in Columbia and putting faculty and staff in place in Springfield.

MU and Missouri’s other two- and four-year public colleges and universities received some one-time funding of $6 million in the state’s fiscal 2010 budget as part of the legislature’s Caring for Missourians initiative to increase the capacity of health care training programs, Headrick said. That money allows MU to increase enrollment by eight medical students each in 2010 and 2011, and she wants to see the funding continue.

“It will take a statewide initiative to do that,” she said, adding that she hopes local residents would support such a funding mechanism, as they stand to benefit.

“If the students spend a significant portion of their training in southwest Missouri,” she said, “that increases the chances that they’ll be physicians in southwest Missouri.”

Edwards said CoxHealth’s family medicine residency program, which puts residents to work caring for patients under doctor-faculty supervision, illustrates the benefits of training physicians locally.

“There are gaps in primary care,” he said. “That program helps to kind of keep our medical staff strong.”[[In-content Ad]]