Providence St. Joseph Medical Center welcomes family medicine resident
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News from Providence St. Joseph Medical Center
POLSON – Providence St. Joseph Medical Center is proud to announce that Isabel Makman, will be training at their hospital and clinic for the next month.
St. Joseph Medical Center CEO James Kiser is committed to the education and training of the next generation of family physicians and feels working with residents is an important part of their mission.
“By providing an excellent training environment, we feel it not only benefits the resident, but also provides valuable care to our patients,” says Kiser. “Our physicians and staff love having residents and introducing them to our community.”
The Family Medicine Residency of Western Montana (FMRWM) is a three-year, intensive training program that prepares family physicians to practice effectively in rural and underserved areas in Montana.
When the residency program began in 2013, Montana ranked 50th in the nation for graduate medical education per capita. The creation of FMRWM more than doubled the number of family medicine physicians being trained in Montana each year and is expected to have a significant impact on the state’s shortage of primary care doctors in rural communities. With 53 out of 56 Montana counties underserved in primary health care, there is an urgent need to focus on building a rural health care workforce that can meet the needs of our rural Montana communities.
“Training our residents in rural Montana communities is crucial to fulfilling our mission. It is in these settings that residents truly experience the full breadth of family medicine,” said program director Dr. Ned Vasquez.
Headquartered in Missoula, FMRWM is sponsored by UM and affiliated with the University of Washington Family Medicine Residency Network. Distinctively, the program is dually accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and the American Osteopathic Association.
The program’s three sponsoring hospitals in western Montana include Kalispell Regional Healthcare, Providence St. Patrick Hospital and Community Medical Center in Missoula. Residents are involved in continuity clinic training at Partnership Health Center in Missoula and Flathead Community Health Center in Kalispell.
Additionally, the program works with an extensive rural training network of nine sites, including Blackfeet Community Hospital in Browning, Northwest Community Health Center in Libby, Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Polson, Clark Fork Valley Hospital in Plains, St. Luke Community Healthcare in Ronan, Community Physicians Group-Stevensville, Marcus Daly Memorial Hospital in Hamilton, Community Hospital of Anaconda and Barrett Hospital and Healthcare in Dillon.
For more information visit http://health.umt.edu/fmrwm/.
