Millions of federal dollars are going toward developing new medical residency programs in rural areas to help fill gaps in coverage.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded $11.2 million to support programs in 14 states. That includes Arizona, Utah and Wyoming.
This comes as hospitals shut down and providers retire in small towns across the West.
In Wyoming, $750,000 will go toward creating a new family medicine residency in Buffalo, in the northeast part of the state. It’ll be similar to an existing program in Thermopolis in central Wyoming.
Beth Robitaille, who leads graduate medical education at the University of Wyoming, said the goal of these programs is to keep more providers in rural areas.
“Physicians tend to stay close to where they train after they graduate,” she said. “If they train rural, they tend to practice rural.”
A 2020 analysis from Australian researchers confirmed that general practitioners who come from rural areas — or train in them — are more likely to practice in rural areas long term.
Robitaille said family medicine doctors are often good matches for rural communities lacking in all kinds of providers. Unlike an OB-GYN, for example, family medicine doctors can deliver babies and provide care like managing diabetes or responding to heart attacks.
“We're the jack of all trades because we can do a little bit of everything,” Robitaille said.
She added that the funds will pay a national organization, Rural GME, to help develop the program and figure out how to make it financially sustainable. Robitaille said a share of the state’s Rural Health Transformation Program dollars will help pay for staff and faculty.
“There's some really creative models and innovative models that are happening all around us,” she said. “But all of that takes time and resources and money.”
The University of Colorado, for example, has developed rural residencies across the state, but it’s been doing that since the early 2000s. Full Circle Health in Idaho has also expanded rural residency opportunities throughout the state. Other rural states, like Wyoming, have far fewer training slots.
“We’re kind of behind the eight ball in that sense,” Robitaille said.
This year, the U.S. health department also put funds toward a rural residency program in Winslow, Arizona, serving Hopi and Navajo Nations, along with another in Vernal, Utah. Another grant is going to Intermountain Health in Utah.
In previous years, health organizations in Arizona, Montana, Nevada and New Mexico have received the rural residency grant, which has been operating since 2019.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
