cAScAdeS eASt retreAt, cOnt. Residents in the Cascades East Family Medicine Residency Program provide needed care to Klamath Falls area residents. Cascades East leaders say they’re excited about the new statewide consortium on graduate medical education and the early work underway to address the needs of local communities. They say future programs must build strong partnerships with academic institutions and community hospitals to ensure their success. They also need to recruit talented faculty and staff to get the program off the ground. “If we have these outcomes here and there’s still more need within the state, we need more places that can train in this way and in this type of location. We would love to expand, and we would love to see other places be able to do that too. I think it would be good for the people of Oregon,” said Hollander-Rodriguez. To learn more about the Cascades East Family Medicine Residency go to ruralresidency.com or contact the program directly. Cascades East Family Medicine Center 2801 Daggett Ave Klamath Falls, OR 97601 info@ruralresidency.com Administration: (541) 274-4611 Clinic: (541) 274-6733 Statewide GME Consortium to Focus on Growing Residency Capacity in Oregon By Ken Cole, Oregon Medical Association it’S hArd tO cOnSider it happening to you or your loved one. A student spends the equivalent of a new mortgage on their medical education and receives their degree in good standing. They apply for residency training in their preferred specialty at a number of training institutions, but then discover there aren’t enough slots. Their medical career is now on hold. For a growing number of medical school graduates in this country, that scenario is becoming a reality. The National Residency Matching Program estimates approximately 663 medical school graduates remained unmatched in their specialty of choice in 2014.1 “To work so hard, only to come to a bottleneck. What would you do in that situation? Work harder to beat out someone else for their spot the next year?” stated Michael Latteri, a second year medical student at Oregon Health & Science University. Latteri hopes to shine a spotlight on the need for additional graduate medical education capacity in Oregon. He set a personal goal to support development of a new residency program in Eugene, the state’s second largest city and Latteri’s hometown. “Our society needs physicians, and medical students need residencies to get there,” added Latteri. “They aren’t easy to plan or run, but if we come together to push the issue, we can find the support to make it happen.” Most Oregon physicians receive GME training elsewhere The Oregon Healthcare Workforce Institute recently compiled data from the Oregon Medical Board on where the state’s active licensed physicians completed their residency. The data show 73% received their GME training outside of the state, and only 24% completed their residency in Oregon. That leaves an estimated 3% of medical school graduates in Oregon without a clear residency connection. Industry educators say that’s not a new trend in Oregon, which has long relied on other states to fill its GME and physician workforce needs. This despite the fact that Oregon ranks tenth in the nation for retaining physicians who do receive their GME training here, an important workforce consideration.2 “It’s always been a philosophy that if we needed more health care workers we advertised that they were needed. Oregon has always been a great place to live and work and people wanted to move here. For a variety of reasons, the environment has not been as conducive to recruiting physicians,” stated John Moorhead, MD, Past President of the Oregon Medical Association and Former Residency Director and Chair Emeritus of the Department of Emergency Medicine, OHSU. w ww.TheOMA.org Spring 2015 15
OMA Spring 2015 Magazine
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