Hospital to pick residents for new program

White River Health System’s internal-medicine residency program will accept its first class of residents in July. From left are Gary Bebow, CEO of WRHS; Jody Smotherman, associate administrator of graduate medical education; Dr. Khaled Khasawneh, program director of the internal-medicine residency program; and Mary Wood Cox, program coordinator.
White River Health System’s internal-medicine residency program will accept its first class of residents in July. From left are Gary Bebow, CEO of WRHS; Jody Smotherman, associate administrator of graduate medical education; Dr. Khaled Khasawneh, program director of the internal-medicine residency program; and Mary Wood Cox, program coordinator.

— A vision that began almost nine years ago is becoming a reality as White River Health System in Batesville prepares to accept its first class of residents into the newly formed Internal Medicine Residency Program. More than 1,000 applicants have applied to the program, which was accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in January.

“It’s the highest level of accreditation that a program of this nature can receive,” said Jody Smotherman, associate administrator of graduate medical education. “We’ve had applicants from across the country and some from outside of the United States. We met with one applicant who drove here from New York.”

The program is a three-year residency for physicians who have graduated from medical school. Those who are accepted to the program will be trained in caring for patients ages 18 and older, as well as working in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Upon completion of the program, residents will be able to take their board exam.

“At the end of their training, residents will be able to choose whether they want to be a general internist or continue their practice in a particular specialization,” said Dr. Khaled Khasawneh, program director for the internal-medicine residency program. Khasawneh also serves as the liaison between WRHS and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, which is working closely with the health system to develop the program. The residency program is the only program in Arkansas besides UAMS to receive ACGME accreditation.

“It was a 175-application, and we logged 600 hours working on it,” Smotherman said of the accreditation application.

Khasawneh added that there was never a lack of support from the hospital administration or the community during the development of the program or the accreditation process.

“Everyone is 100 percent committed to the program here. That’s why we succeeded with our first attempt for accreditation,” he said.

WRHS received the Leader in Health Care award at the Batesville Area Chamber of Commerce’s annual gala in January for the residency program. The program will admit 10 residents each year, for a total of 30 residents over the three-year period. The first class will begin in July.

“What we’re looking for in applicants is professionalism, a good work ethic, team players and those interested in being a vibrant part of this community and improving the access to health care,” Smotherman said. “We’ve had several applicants from Arkansas and the surrounding states. Fifty percent of all medical students come from rural communities. Of those, 75 percent have a desire to train and work in their communities, and of that 75 percent who get to train in a rural area, 80 percent of those will stay in that area.”

Gary Bebow, CEO of White River Health System, said the need for the program became apparent as a result of the increasing difficulty of finding physicians who wanted to work in rural Arkansas, coupled with the aging population of established physicians in the area.

“We took the initiative to solve the problem, and there were a lot of questions in the beginning. We started a dialogue with UAMS, conducted feasibility studies and worked with a consulting firm that works with residency programs in the start-up phase. As time went on, it became more apparent that this was the best long-term solution to the problem,” Bebow said.

In addition to Khasawneh and Smotherman, the WRHS graduate medical education team consists of Dr. Morgan Norton, associate program director, and Mary Wood-Cox, program coordinator. Norton is a 1995 UAMS College of Medicine graduate who trained in internal medicine at UAMS. Khasawneh has five years of experience as a medical director and was recently chosen as Internal Medicine Faculty of the Year by his residents at UAMS.

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