- College of Medicine Faculty News Internal Medicine Residency Residents
The arrival of summer marks a new year of residency and fellowship training for young doctors around the nation and here in Florida. Beginning July 1, more than 720 physicians across the state will be training in needed specialties like primary care, surgery, psychiatry and cardiology through a unique partnership between the UCF College of Medicine and HCA Florida Healthcare. With the fastest-growing graduate medical education (GME) program in the state, the UCF-HCA Florida Healthcare GME Consortium is making progress in reducing the physician shortage.
Doctors cannot practice medicine immediately after graduating from medical school – they must first complete residences, where they train with experienced physicians in their specialty of choice, such as pediatrics or surgery. Fellowships are optional programs that come after residency for doctors seeking even more specialized training. Residencies and fellowships are integral to solving the physician shortage because many physicians begin their practices near where they do their post-graduate training.
“As the need for physicians grows in the state of Florida, with an estimated 18,000 physician shortage projected over the next decade, we are helping to meet those needs,” said Dr. Stephen Cico, UCF’s associate dean for graduate medical education and the UCF-HCA consortium’s designated institutional officer. “We are focused on medical specialties that are or are going to be in the highest demand.”
Florida’s Fastest Growing Program
UCF began its first residency in 2014 in Internal Medicine with HCA Florida Osceola Hospital and the Orlando VA Medical Center. Today, the UCF-HCA Florida GME Consortium has 44 accredited programs across the state – in Greater Orlando, Gainesville, Tallahassee, Ocala, Pensacola, Fort Walton Beach and Sanford.
“This spring, the UCF-HCA Florida Healthcare GME Consortium celebrated a major milestone – our 1,000th graduate. These new attending physicians will go on to make a positive difference in the community with the skills and experience gained working alongside experts in one of our teaching hospitals,” said Cheryll Albold, Ph.D., vice president of graduate medical education for HCA Healthcare’s North Florida Division. “We are excited to add six new graduate medical education programs starting July 1, further expanding learning opportunities, in vitally needed healthcare specialties, for our next generation of doctors.”
In the last three years, the Consortium grew by 200 physicians, 13 programs and three hospitals. No other GME-sponsoring institution in Florida has had that level of growth. The latest programs beginning this summer include Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Transitional Year residencies at HCA Florida Lake Monroe Hospital in Sanford, a Cardiology fellowship at UCA Florida Osceola Hospital, Transitional Year and Psychiatry residencies at HCA Florida West Hospital and a Cardiology residency at HCA Florida Ocala Hospital. The Transitional Year program is a one-year training that provides newly graduated doctors with comprehensive clinical skills before they go on to more specialized training in areas such as dermatology and physical medicine and rehabilitation.
“These graduate medical education programs in our hospitals are instrumental to the success of our communities,” said Alan Keesee, chief executive officer at HCA Florida Ocala Hospital. “We are training up the next generation of physicians in local communities in an effort to retain their talent and meet the needs of our growing populations.”
Helping Address Physician Shortage
A Florida Physician Workforce Study shows that almost one-third of licensed physicians in Florida are 60 or older and as many as 8,000 plan to stop seeing patients in the next five years – most because of retirement. In the past eight years, the UCF-HCA consortium has graduated 1,043 new physicians and approximately 50 percent are practicing in Florida, a major contribution to addressing Florida’s physician shortage. The UCF-HCA Consortium is able to train more doctors to meet this need because unlike traditional academic programs, the partnership has multiples of specialty programs. For example, UCF-HCA has six programs in Internal Medicine across the state, two in Family Medicine, three in OB-GYN and four in Psychiatry – a significant contribution to primary care services for Floridians. Emergency Medicine is another high-need area. UCF-HCA has three ER training programs across Florida and just increased the number of residents it is training in Osceola County to help meet that area’s demands.
These GME programs also bring needed physicians to rural, isolated and medically underserved areas, such as Pensacola, Ocala, Sanford and Osceola County. For example, the consortium created the first community-based Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility fellowship in the country. This specialty helps infertile couples and most of those services are in large cities, requiring patients to travel long distances for care. The UCF-HCA program is based at HCA Florida Osceola Hospital in Kissimmee.
In addition to providing care at HCA Florida Healthcare hospitals, many of the residents and fellows also care for the state’s veterans. Physicians training in Internal Medicine, Rheumatology, Endocrinology, Psychiatry, Cardiology, Surgery, Vascular Surgery and Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility provide care at the Orlando VA Medical Center.
“Our goal for our GME programs is, ultimately, increasing access to expert care for our patients throughout Florida,” said Dr. Albold. “HCA Florida Healthcare’s strategic partnership with UCF’s College of Medicine is providing a pipeline that will directly benefit patients by continually training the best and brightest new doctors, many of whom will ultimately build their own practices right here in the Sunshine State.”
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- physician shortage UCF-HCA Graduate Medical Education Consortium