Local hospitals could hold key to boost residencies

Increasing the physician work force means training more residents, and a medical school has found how to do so.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. May 15, 2006.

After more than 20 years as a practicing gastroenterologist, Richard Greenwald, MD, is helping turn his community hospital into a teaching institution.

This year Dr. Greenwald, now vice president of medical affairs at Boca Raton Community Hospital, helped develop a module covering gastroenterology, the liver and nutrition for medical students from the new University of Miami School of Medicine program at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. The hospital's partnership with FAU and the University of Miami to teach medical students is the first step in a long-range plan to cultivate more physicians for southeast Florida. By 2010, some 100 to 125 medical residents are expected to be training there.

Boca Raton Community Hospital may be the first hospital in recent years to take advantage of a little-used opportunity to get Medicare funding for new residencies. Because the hospital has never sponsored a residency, it is eligible for Medicare graduate medical education dollars, money that has been capped for existing programs since 1996.

Given concerns that a physician shortage may develop by 2020, Boca Raton could become a model for those looking for ways to expand residencies and physician numbers, work-force experts say. Right now, opening residencies at hospitals that haven't previously had them is the only route to get new government funding.

Richard Reynolds, MD, senior vice president of medical advancement at Boca Raton Community Hospital, wouldn't be surprised if others followed his hospital's lead. "As we look ahead, with the growth and aging of the population, we're going to have a doctor shortage," he said. "Current schools are going to expand, and other [community] hospitals will become teaching hospitals."