No matter what programs you look at, there's less out west than east just because of population density and history.
As far as how IM-light and FM-heavy it is, I can say it's definitely a "hippie" thing. Something about the value in a provider caring for the ENTIRE family from birth all the way to death, that it adds this extra personal element where the physician becomes part of the extended family even! And bumps into their patients at the grocery store, the local pee wee baseball games, etc etc. A pillar of the community and a trusted friend.
Compared to the East coast, the West is still, well, the wild west to some extent. The idea that you still need a practitioner that can do all of the following: do a C-section, an appendectomy, sew an ear back on, do well child checks, a vasectomy, do your sigmoidoscopy, and treat your "cough" - I have learned to call this, "cowboy medicine." It's basically what happens when you have just one doc in the boondocks. It broadens the scope of practice. Now, for an FM doc to sew an ear back on in a city like Seattle - outside the scope of practice, why the **** didn't you get a real surgeon? Not gonna fly. In some parts of WA, 5 hour drive from a surgeon? You just tried to save an ear.
The ob/gyn clerkship director told me the idea of FM docs doing anything more than a "simple" vaginal delivery (a concept ob/gyn doesn't believe in for non-obs, as any delivery can go "wrong"), was ridiculous, as the ob/gyn spends 4 years training doing nothing but this type of medicine, and the FM doc only does a few months of ob/gyn. They summed up FM docs (without special fellowships) doing this, as "cowboy medicine." That's where I got the term. That's also were I sorta picked up one idea about what makes FM unique from, say, IM.
Let's just say I was privy to some lectures from both sides as to the differences in IM and FM philosophies, the history, and why it's a thang out west.
An IM doc can't fit the above bill in any meaningful way as I described it. I still see value in IM, it's distinct in philosophy, there's reasons to have it. Just saying.
TLDR:
there's an interesting reason there's such a "FM" movement out west
if you read the story, you might learn about FM and West coast medicine philosophy
