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SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: Residency programs get boost
$1.25 million going to OB/GYN, emergency medicine efforts at UMC
By K.C. HOWARD
REVIEW-JOURNAL
The University of Nevada School of Medicine is due to receive more than a million dollars to supplement its residency programs in Southern Nevada, officials announced Friday.
University Medical Center, where the medical school's Southern Nevada residents are based, will receive $1.25 million from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid, also known as CMS, for 25 additional residents.
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"It also means we now have the money to fund our emergency medicine residency with UMC and expand our OB/GYN residency. So I'm just as excited as I can possibly be," said Dr. Jim Lenhart, vice dean of the medical school.
Upon completion of medical school, physicians train for three years as residents at hospitals before they're on their own.
Studies have shown that residents tend to practice where they do their residencies, which officials said was another reason the money was so crucial to the state.
Lenhart said the medical school's residency programs have been unable to expand since Congress passed the Balanced Budget Act in 1997, which capped the residency dollars institutions received.
The federal agency currently funds 146 state medical school residents, 12 of whom are OB/GYNS. It reallocated funds to increase residents in a small number of urban teaching hospitals across the nation.
UMC and the medical school then applied for the residents with the help of Nevada's congressional delegation.
There is no emergency medical residency in Nevada, and hospitals import such physicians from other states to fill emergency and trauma departments.
"Emergency physicians, we do everything. We're the safety net of the community. Emergency physicians are the people that are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said Dr. Dale Carrison, chairman of UMC's emergency department.
Beginning the emergency medicine residency program is contingent upon approval from a residency review commission, he said.
Members of the commission will inspect UMC on Monday and decide whether to accredit the program in February.
If approved, Lenhart said he hoped the program would begin in June.
The review commission, part of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, didn't qualify UMC for an emergency medicine residency program last year, citing a lack of office space and funding for the academic component of the program.
Those deficiencies have been corrected, Carrison said.
He said he believes the UMC program could export its emergency physicians to states such as South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana that don't have emergency physician residency programs.
"But Nevada comes first. I love this state," he said.
Also chairman of the Nevada Homeland Security Commission, Carrison said the grant will help prepare the state for emergencies.
"Having adequate nurses and physicians to be available in a time of crisis is extremely important," he said. "That's why it's so important we're geared up to have more education opportunities."
