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MEDICAL Medical Education Wins Big
EDUCATION
Building on 2013 successes and recognizing
continued from page 15 physician workforce shortages, the Texas Legisla-
ture gave another significant boost to undergrad-
by trade, he is senior vice president and chief operating officer uate and graduate medical education (GME)
at Midland Memorial and past dean of Midland College’s Health funding in 2015, including:
Sciences Division.
• $53 million for new GME expansion grant pro-
Wanted: Primary Care grams, a $40 million increase over 2014–15
Oil drilling in Midland may be cooling off, Mr. Dent adds, but funding levels;

the boom over the last several years — and Midland’s overall • $7 million for primary care physician pipeline
boom-and-bust history — has transformed the once tumbleweed programs: $4 million — or 31 percent — above
town now in need of more doctors to keep up with the economic current funding for the existing family medicine
and population growth that brought an influx of new workers and residency program, and $3 million to restart the
businesses. According to U.S. Census data, Midland County’s Statewide Primary Care Preceptorship Program;
population increased 10.7 percent from 2010 to 2013, compared
with a 5.4-percent population increase for Texas as a whole. • A $20 million, or 22-percent, increase in bien-
Twenty percent of the county’s population lives in rural areas. nial per-resident, or “formula,” funding;

“Our problem is two-fold, and we have to figure out which • Steady funding for the primary care physician
comes first: making sure the community truly understands the workforce innovations grant program;
value and importance of seeing primary care doctors on a reg-
ular basis and making sure we have enough primary care • An additional $53 million, or 3-percent bien-
providers to meet that demand. [The Pathway program] is one nial increase, in medical student formula fund-
way to try and hit all the angles and meet the long-term need ing;
of the community,” Mr. Dent said. “People from the big city
— West Coast, East Coast — get here, and it’s not what they • Maintained funding for the State Physician Ed-
are familiar with, so they end up leaving. But we’ve found in ucation Loan Repayment Program;
our medical staff and other clinical staff that if they have a con-
nection to Midland — a family or they were raised here — • A new loan repayment program for psychiatrists
they stay much longer.” and other mental health professionals; and

Embedded in DO training is early and frequent exposure to • Additional money for mental health workforce
primary care, a big reason 65 percent of TCOM’s students go training programs in underserved areas.
into primary care specialties like family and internal medicine
and pediatrics, Dr. Peska adds. Large classrooms, divided into For more information on the GME expan-
small groups, feature advisors largely in primary care. An even sion grants, visit tma.tips/GMEgrants.
larger percentage of students enrolled in TCOM’s rural training
track — where Dr. Peska says trainees “really see the diversity of
primary care” — go on to choose the specialty.

As a teaching facility, Midland Memorial already hosts an in-
ternal medicine residency program through Texas Tech Univer-
sity Health Sciences Center, making it ripe training ground for
Midland College students when they return for their clerkships
in the final two years of medical school.

Although still early — seven years out — UNTHSC is ex-
ploring sponsorship of residency pipelines within the hospital
so graduates can stay in Midland. Some hurdles may lie ahead.

For guidance navigating accreditation and challenges with fa-
cilitated entry into residency, Dr. Nash plans to reach out to
Texas Tech, which offers a Family Medicine Accelerated Track
that guarantees students who choose the specialty a residency

18 San Antonio Medicine • September 2016