NEWPORT – Samaritan Health Services has received two grants totaling $1.2 million to develop programs at its hospitals in Newport and Lincoln City to encourage more family doctors to start their medical practices in Lincoln County.
The family medicine residency program is designed to give young physicians the opportunity to train in the two hospitals, helping them gain a deeper understanding of rural medicine which will enable them to stay and maintain long-term, successful practices.
The goal is to accept the first class of trainees in two years, the hospitals said in the announcement, after getting accreditation and hiring a program director. Grants are from the Oregon Health Authority and the U.S. Health Resources & Services Administration.
“We are thrilled that this program is on its way,” said Dr. Lesley Ogden, chief executive officer of Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital and Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital. “We feel the program will allow us to grow our own physicians within the county – people who, after their third year in the residency program, will know our communities and want to build their practices locally.”
The rural residency program will be based at Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport, but will be linked to Samaritan’s family medicine residency program in Corvallis.
A residency program is a post-graduate program for physicians required to obtain an unrestricted license to practice medicine. Residents work alongside an attending physician, seeing patients in a variety of settings. Once they graduate, they may affiliate with the hospital where they trained or choose to go elsewhere.
“The training program at the coast will offer a different model of family medicine training than the model we use in the valley,” said Marcus Alderman, director of Samaritan’s academic affairs. “Residents will spend their first year at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Corvallis to work with higher acuity patients, and then will spend their second and third years based at Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport, with training throughout Lincoln County.”
Since 2011, Samaritan has successfully retained 40 medical residents, 13 of those in family medicine. Of all the graduates in family medicine, more than 70 percent have decided to stay in Oregon.
“We feel this new model of training, specifically geared to rural medicine in a coastal setting, will help us address the shortage of physicians at the coast,” said Alderman.
Samaritan Pacific is finishing a $70 million remodel and construction of its Newport hospital and is scheduled to complete a $40 million replacement of its Lincoln City hospital in 2020.
