By Cara Miller
Arizona Daily Wildcat
While health care issues are debated on Capitol Hill, Arizona has taken one matter into its own hands.
Primary health care in rural areas such as Bisbee, Globe and Miami might soon see an increase in the number of physicians, thanks to a grant from the Flinn Foundation and the cooperative efforts of Arizona's medical community.
The Phoenix-based Flinn Foundation will provide $173,800 for the next two years to develop new practice sites to train primary care physicians in selected rural locations.
"Health care on a national level is stalemated in Congress and it is likely they are not going to address primary care. I think it's going to become a state issue," said Evan Kligman, UA Family and Community Medicine department head.
The sites will be used to train community physicians to better prepare residents for medical emergencies, pregnancies, general surgical skills and general primary care in rural areas.
William Read, associate director for the Flinn Foundation said the program would be innovative and unusual, and would be meaningful for residents to enrich their culture and their education.
"Models elsewhere have been successful in attracting residents to rural primary care," Read said.
The ultimate goal of the initiative is to increase the number of family practice providers in Arizona's rural areas and encourage new family practice physicians
"The primary care physicians we have now are retiring and we need someone to replace them," Kligman said.
The collaborators in the project Ä which include the Arizona Consortium of Family Practice Residencies, the Arizona Academy of Family Physicians and the Arizona Area Health Education Center Ä are planning to have two sites operational this year. The sites have not been announced yet, but rural areas in Pinal, Apache, Coconino, and Navajo counties are being considered.
To help fund this project the foundation hopes to generate matching public and private-sector support.
Read said they are also hoping to continue the program past the initial two years with funding by the state.
"We hope the legislature will see it and want to provide funds," he said.
National studies indicate that to address the shortage of primary care physicians, at least 50 percent of all U.S. medical graduates must enter primary care. The UA echoes these statistics, with half of UA medical graduates entering primary care residency programs and 33 percent continuing to practice in one of the primary care areas.
The Flinn Foundation and the accompanying medical groups plan to use these training sites to encourage medical students to enter primary care.
"We are identifying the best possible sites with the most innovative curriculum so the atmosphere is positive and students will want to practice there," Kligman said.