Lamoille Health Partners, a medical clinic based in Morrisville, will receive nearly $500,000 in federal funding to create a statewide training program for medical residents specializing in primary care.
The timing is fortuitous for Vermont, which already has a severe shortage of primary care providers and needs new recruits. Some 40 percent of physicians are over the age of 60, meaning the state needs about 65 more to fill expected vacancies, according to Melissa Volansky, a physician who is chief medical officer at Lamoille Health Partners.
Residencies are one way of creating a stable of primary care physicians. About 60 percent of residency graduates end up practicing near where they were trained, according to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. The grant program is distributing $23 million nationwide to support the development of residency programs in an array of specialties.
Awarded through the federal Teaching Health Center Planning and Development Program, the $495,000 for Lamoille Health Partners is intended to help the clinic create a three-year statewide residency program with 10 spots by 2025. Once accredited, the program would increase to 30 residents by the third year. It would allow students to get experience in clinic and hospital settings. “For the right person who is as mission-driven as we are, who really understands the tremendous need in a rural situation, and they like rural life and want that to be part of their lives, this is the perfect career path,” Volansky said in an interview.
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Each year, about nine primary care residents complete their three-year training
at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, with about the same number at Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital in Plattsburgh, N.Y., and at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire. With few opportunities for rural residencies, Volansky said, most physicians-in-training end up in urban areas.
“They dream about rural care, but maybe they haven’t had a chance to experience it,” she said.
Mike Fisher, who works for Vermont Legal Aid as the state’s chief health care advocate, said on Tuesday that his office often hears from people who can’t find a primary care provider.
“For people on Medicaid, for people dealing with particular kinds of issues, it is often next to impossible to find someone to give them care,” Fisher said. “For people with transportation challenges who maybe are unable to be seen in a practice that is close to them, there are often very few options.”
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U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, has fought to expand the Teaching Health Center Planning and Development Program. During a committee hearing in February, Sanders said life expectancy is declining in the U.S., despite the high costs of health care.
“Access to health care is an important part of why people are living shorter lives,” Sanders said. He added that the lack of medical professionals contributes not only to increased suffering and death but also wastes health care dollars by sending people to emergency rooms when they don’t have access to primary care.
“Going to the community health center is one-tenth the cost of going to the emergency room,” Sanders said.
Correction, April 10, 2023: An earlier version of this story contained an incorrect figure for the number of primary care residents trained at UVM Medical Center.
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