Apparently, the doctor is not "in" in rural Arizona.

But state legislators hope to change that with the passage of a bill establishing a Rural Health Professions Program involving medical students.

House Bill 2301 was approved unanimously yesterday by the Committee on Rural and Native American Affairs. The legislation would provide an intensive rural experience for a small number of medical students.

The Rural Health Professions Program calls for state universities to select four pharmacy, 10 nurse practitioner and 15 medical students to participate in an 18-week rural rotation program spread out over three years.

If approved by the full House and Senate, the bill will replace a 1994 rural rotation bill that was to take effect in 1998. It called for 50 percent of all medical, nursing and pharmacy students to participate in a rural rotation program.

This was an overzealous attempt by legislators to improve the situation, said Rep. Lou-Anne Preble, R-Tucson, who introduced House Bill 2301 to the Legislature. Preble participated in a 1993 task force on rural health issues and supported sending 50 percent of the students to rural areas. But she acknowledged that forcing half of all medical students into such a program would not necessarily lure medical students back to rural areas once they graduate.

Janet E. Bingham, public affairs director for the Arizona Health Sciences Center, said the new bill provides a small number of students with a more productive and focused health care experience.

She said that under this program, selected students would spend 30 percent of their clinical training in the same rural community, enabling them to form a relationship with the community and its patients. The students would also be required to have an academic and clinical mentor who would support and follow them through the program.

Under the program, medical students would be sent to a rural area for four to six weeks between their first and second year of medical school. They would return during their third year for a six-week clerkship, and finally, complete a six-to-eight-week clinical rotation during their fourth year.

Nancy Alexander Koff, associate dean for academic affairs at the UA College of Medicine, told committee members that while this intensive program is for a limited number of students, the school will continue to send additional students to rural areas to complete rotations.

Dr. Jay W. Smith, UA dean for academic affairs, said that while the UA tracks the type of medicine its graduates practice, it does not track the location of their practice. He said this program would enable them to closely monitor program participants.