Physician Residency Rural Training Baseline Study
The shortage of physicians in rural America is a long-standing problem that has persisted as physicians continue to settle preferentially in metropolitan and suburban areas. One of the strategies developed to ameliorate this situation was the establishment of rural residency training. Some of the provisions of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (BBA97) were aimed at encouraging expanded rural graduate medical education training, while others may have the opposite effect. In addition, other factors, such as the diffusion of managed care into rural areas, may also adversely influence residency training in rural areas. This project created a rural residency baseline from which changes caused by the BBA97 and other influences could be measured. Study results describe the current extent of such residency training and will measure the changes that take place between now and five years from now in a follow-up study. All nonfederal family practice residencies (about 425) were surveyed with a mail questionnaire about their rural training activities.
Publications
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Family Medicine Residency Training in Rural Areas: How Much is Taking Place, and Is It Enough to Prepare a Future Generation of Rural Family Physicians?
Author(s): Roger A Rosenblatt, R Schneeweiss, L Gary Hart, S Casey, C Holly Andrilla, Fredercik M Chen
Report Number: No. 69
Date: 03 / 2002
Determines how much rural family practice training is taking place in the United States. Among the results are that only 33 family medicine residency programs (7.4 percent) are located in rural areas and most of the training sponsored by these programs occurs in rural areas. On the other hand, while more than one-third of the urban programs listed rural training as an important part of their mission, only 2.3 percent of the training they supported took place in rural areas. For the nation as a whole, only 7.5 percent of family medicine residency training occurred in rural areas despite the fact that 22.3 percent of the U.S. population lives in rural places. The report concludes that to the extent that there is a link between the place of training and future practice, the lack of rural training contributes to the shortage of rural physicians. Furthermore, unless significant efforts are made to increase rural residency training, rural physician shortages are likely to persist.
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