As health college gears up, state need for doctors grows

Dr. Natasha Bray, associate dean of clinical medicine for the Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine, instructs Dr. Kenneth Heiles, dean of the college, on the use of an adult simulator Thursday in one of four simulator rooms at the new Fort Smith campus.
Dr. Natasha Bray, associate dean of clinical medicine for the Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine, instructs Dr. Kenneth Heiles, dean of the college, on the use of an adult simulator Thursday in one of four simulator rooms at the new Fort Smith campus.

As officials move forward with efforts to boost the number of medical students in the state, factors such as the age of Arkansas' current doctors and a lack of funding for medical residency positions continue to pose problems, experts said.

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NWA Democrat-Gazette

The Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine at Chaffee Crossing in Fort Smith can help ease the strain on Arkansas’ health care system when it opens next fall, but it alone won’t solve the state’s doctor shortage, experts said.

The Arkansas Colleges of Health Education is holding an open house today to showcase its new Fort Smith facility, which will house its first medical program, the Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine. The private school is to open in August 2017 with a class of 150, and faculty members plan to begin interviewing prospective students next month.

The new school will open at a time when Arkansas faces a shortage of doctors, especially primary care doctors in rural areas. Arkansas ranks 46th in the nation in the number of doctors per capita, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

As current doctors grow older, that problem is likely to get worse, said Kyle Parker, chief executive officer of the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education.

Arkansas had about 5,800 physicians in 2014, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Three out of every 10 of those doctors were at least 60 years old. Only about half that number were younger than 40.

"We are reaching a tipping point," Parker said.

While older doctors near retirement, demand for medical staff members grows -- creating a gap that's already evident in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, he said. More doctors are needed to meet the state's demands.

The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock graduates about 150 medical students per year, the school said. Earlier this month, the New York Institute of Technology welcomed 120 students for its first osteopathic medicine class in Jonesboro.

By the time the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education graduates its first class in 2021, the number of medical students graduating in Arkansas could be about three times this year's number.

That growth doesn't guarantee a corresponding surge of Arkansas doctors, though, said Dr. Richard Wheeler, executive associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Medicine at UAMS. That's because those students can't get medical licenses until they've completed years of hospital residencies -- and that, Wheeler said, remains a bottleneck.

"We could turn out an infinite number of medical students," he said. "But if they can't get into a residency, then they can't eventually get a license, and they can't practice."

Arkansas had 747 medical resident and fellowship positions in 2014 -- 110 more than it had in 2004, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. That 17 percent increase doesn't include programs with some types of accreditation, and it's slightly above the national average.

But the number of residency positions has fallen behind the state's needs, Wheeler said. The federal Medicare program subsidizes residencies at most hospitals, and that funding has stagnated for more than a decade.

To help, UAMS is looking to establish more residency programs at smaller, more rural hospitals in central and northeast Arkansas -- areas the state Health Department has identified as severely understaffed.

"If you're here in Little Rock or Fayetteville or someplace like that, it doesn't look like a huge doctor shortage," but rural areas have trouble attracting and retaining doctors, Wheeler said.

New doctors tend to remain within an hour or two of the area where they trained, said Frazier Edwards, executive director of the Arkansas Osteopathic Medical Association. And most residencies historically have been in larger cities.

"There [used to be] a lot of virgin territory in the state" without residency programs, he said. But over the past eight years, the association has tried to build up more clinical rotations as a foundation that medical schools can use to attract prospective doctors, he said.

"You almost have to put the cart before the horse, so to speak," he said.

Ahead of today's open house, officials including Gov. Asa Hutchinson and U.S. Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., were visiting Fort Smith on Saturday for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine's 102,000-square-foot building at Chaffee Crossing in Fort Smith.

In a statement ahead of the event, a spokesman for the senator said the school "will help alleviate the shortage of physicians and improve access to care in the region."

Parker said the new osteopathy program will help ease the strain on Arkansas' health care system, but he cautioned that a single new program will not solve the doctor shortage.

"It's one more finger in the dike," he said.

Metro on 08/21/2016

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