Whole Health Institute looks to grow residencies
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Arkansas is training more doctors than it can keep.
Why it matters: The state's physician shortage is already straining access to care, especially in rural communities, and the bottleneck is about to get tighter as Bentonville's Alice L. Walton School of Medicine begins graduating about 48 students a year in 2029.
Driving the news: Bentonville-based Heartland Whole Health Institute on Monday launched the statewide Graduate Medical Education Technical Assistance Center, meant to help hospitals, health systems and communities start or expand residency programs.
- The launch came with a report that says Arkansas needs a more coordinated strategy to grow residency training capacity statewide.
The big picture: Arkansas medical schools graduate about 430 medical students a year, the report says, but the state offers only 375 entry-level residency positions — the postgraduate training doctors complete after medical school.
- The gap means many Arkansas-trained physicians leave the state for their residency, lowering the odds they return to practice here.
By the numbers: A news release says Arkansas could eventually support roughly 500 additional residency positions, generating about $705 million in economic impact.
- More than a third of Arkansans live in federally designated health professional shortage areas, and about 35% of the state's physicians are 60 or older, according to the report.
- Arkansas also ranks at or near the bottom among peer states in several medical specialties, including general surgery, OB-GYN and urology, the report says.
State of play: The new center is not handing out money for residencies, Sarah Bemis, Heartland's associate vice president of policy and workforce, told Axios.
- It's offering free statewide technical help on accreditation, grant writing, operations and long-term sustainability of graduate medical education.
- Heartland Whole Health founder Alice Walton is funding the center's operations.
What they're saying: "One of the biggest barriers, besides funding, is the lack of available technical support in this very complex workforce area," Bemis said.
Context: It's not just a rural Arkansas problem. Northwest Arkansas' residencies historically are mostly in family and internal medicine, though Washington Regional recently secured state backing to add more slots to deepen specialty care.
- A Heartland Forward analysis last year estimated that adding 275 residency positions over six years could generate $465 million in statewide economic activity.
What's next: The center is already open to hospitals and communities statewide, Bemis said.
- Heartland Whole Health plans to build a six-person team and add an advisory committee with representation from all five state health regions, each medical school, the Department of Human Services, and Veterans Affairs, Bemis said.
The bottom line: Arkansas has spent years building more medical school capacity. Now it needs enough residency slots — and the technical help to create them — to keep doctors practicing here.