The state’s new Graduate Medical Education Residency Expansion Board approved a draft of its rules last week with little comment from board members.
The board held its first meeting in May and is responsible for reviewing applications from hospitals and clinics to fund existing or startup residency programs.
A public comment period on the rules runs until Oct. 13. The rules will then go through the Legislative Council for final approval if no substantive changes are required.
Arkansas hospitals or other medical facilities applying for a grant from the board will need to submit a plan that includes a timeline, budget, proposed program, the size of the program, proof of accreditation, letter of support from both the sponsoring institution and entity and the number of new residency slots that will be established, the bylaws approved Wednesday say.
The Arkansas Legislature passed Act 854, creating the board, in 2019, but it didn’t hold its first meeting until May. State Rep. Lee Johnson, R-Greenwood, who sponsored the law, said the board faced startup funding challenges until the fiscal session earlier this year.
The initial funding for the board is $500,000, which came from the Arkansas State Medical Board’s cash fund. However, Johnson said the board has not yet been awarded or allocated these funds.
“The process is, is always a little bit slower than we want it to be,” Johnson said.
“But there’s also an upside to a slow process, I think it gives you a better chance to get it right out of the gate so I don’t have a real sense of the timeline. I mean, I would hope that once these rules are adopted, that the board acts pretty quickly to start taking applications.”
Funds can only be utilized “for salary and benefit of residents” — not to construct buildings, pay administrators, etc. — and “funds won’t be released until residents are actually seated in the program to begin their training,” Sherry Turner, chair of the board and a professor and associate dean of graduate medical education at the Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine, said in a previous meeting.
After grants have been awarded to new or expanding programs, the board may also fund additional years of new fellowships from excess funds, if it “determines funds appropriated are available.”
These grants will support new medical fellows that have completed three years of residency and are enrolled in a “new fellowship program in a field in which the state has less than eighty percent (80%) of the national average of physicians per one hundred thousand (100,000) people,” according to the proposed rules.
The bylaws were written by the state attorney general’s office and approved by the governor’s office before going to the board.
A study by the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement in December found that residency slots throughout the state were not keeping up with the number of medical school graduates seeking residencies.
The number of graduates has increased as a result of opening of two new medical schools, the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro in 2016 and the Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine in Fort Smith the following year.
Additionally, the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville is expected to welcome its inaugural class in 2025.
According to the Center for Health Improvement report, since 2021 the number of medical school graduates has surpassed the number of residency positions each year. In 2023, there were 401 graduates and just 356 residency positions, so a large portion of the year’s graduates had to leave the state for training.
The federal government reimburses some of the costs associated with residency programs through the Medicare program, but in 1997 Congress capped the number of residency slots for which the reimbursement is available.
Last year, nearly 57% of students graduating from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences were matched with hospitals or clinics out of state, or 83 of the 146 students who graduated. In March of this year, it was 53% of students out of the 164.
At the medical school in Jonesboro, 104 students were matched in March with positions in Arkansas, a Mississippi Delta state or a state contiguous to Arkansas, Casey Pearce, a school spokesman said at the time.
At the medical school in Fort Smith, 135 students were matched this year, with only 22 of those staying in the state, Dr. Shannon Jimenez, the school’s dean said.
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Publish date : 2024-09-16 23:00:00
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