ST. LOUIS — To address the shortage of doctors in Missouri, more than $2 million in state funds will be allocated for the first time to create additional positions for physicians-in-training at hospitals in ºüÀêÊÓƵ and Columbia.
The funds will support the training of at least 90 physicians in family medicine, internal medicine and psychiatry over the next 10 years.
Paula Nickelson, director of the Missouri Department of Health and Social Services, said the new grant program, , is a critical step to improving access to high-quality health care.
“By supporting medical residency programs in rural and underserved areas, we can better ensure that Missourians have access to the type of health care services they need when they need them,†Nickelson said.
People are also reading…
Residency programs are the mandatory, three-to-seven years of training (depending on the specialty) at a hospital or clinic after medical school graduation, which is required for full physician licensure. The programs are mostly funded by federal Medicare dollars.
Physicians tend to stay in the states where they completed their residency. Of students who attend medical school and do their training in Missouri, 56% end up working in the state, according to data compiled by DHSS.
However, Missouri loses many of its medical school graduates to other states due to a lack of residency slots. Last year, Missouri graduated 1,042 medical students but had only 679 residency positions.
Missouri has seven medical schools and is ranked ninth in the nation in producing medical school graduates, said Dr. Heidi Miller, chief medical officer for DHSS.
“Yet, our residency slots are about two-thirds the number of medical school graduates, so we’re exporting so many Missouri-trained medical school graduates to other states,†Miller said.
More investment is needed address the state’s workforce gap, she said. To eliminate the health professional shortage areas in Missouri, the state currently needs more than 1,000 physicians, including nearly 600 primary care doctors and 160 psychiatrists.
Miller said while some states have not invested in residency programs, others have been providing funding for the past 10 to 30 years.
“It’s wonderful that Missouri has started,†she said. “We know that physicians tend to stay where they trained, so we’re grateful to have this new beginning.â€
Dr. Sarah Cole, director of Mercy’s family medicine residency, said the new funding is a big step toward training physicians to work in underserved areas of Missouri.
“It represents a unique way for primary care residencies to be able to accept more medical school graduates beyond funding provided by Medicare,†Cole said.
The Missouri General Assembly last year established the grant program for new residency positions. Each hospital or health system approved receives $75,000 per resident each year of training. The rest of the cost — the average cost to train a resident is $150,000 a year — must be covered by the hospital.
The program is subject to appropriations to DHSS by the Legislature, so the maximum number of awards is contingent up the amount available.
This year, the funds were used to create nine residency training slots: four in family medicine at the University of Missouri School of Medicine in Columbia and Mercy Hospital ºüÀêÊÓƵ, three in internal medicine at Mercy Hospital ºüÀêÊÓƵ and SSM Health in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, and two in psychiatry at SSM Health in ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
That means Mercy’s family medicine residency program will increase from six new residents each year to eight. For the new slots, Cole said she intentionally recruited doctors hoping to stay in Missouri and care for the most vulnerable.
The residents currently work with faculty physicians at the in Creve Coeur, she said, and the expansion will allow Mercy to have residents also working with faculty at the in Ferguson.
Mercy’s internal medicine residency program will increase its number of physicians trained each year from eight to nine, said Dr. Katherine Garland, medical director of the , which serves patients who uninsured or on Medicaid,
Many of the graduates end up providing primary care in high-need areas across Missouri, Garland said. “By increasing the number of residents we train each year, we hope to increase the pipeline of highly trained physicians to practice in Mercy’s communities for decades to come.â€