ATHENS, Ga. -- Scrapping plans for medical residency programs at northeast Georgia hospitals and other parts of the state could save the state $6 million, but could threaten the main point of increasing medical training in the state - to get more doctors practicing in Georgia.

Advertisement

Experts say young doctors tend to settle near where they complete their graduate medical education, the years of training in residencies or internships after they've completed four years of medical school.

But Medical College of Georgia officials have said they might abandon plans to develop residency programs in Athens in conjunction with a new medical campus slated to take in its first students this fall.

Eliminating graduate medical education here was part of an overall $300 million budget reduction plan submitted to the Legislature by the University System of Georgia.

Legislators told university system Chancellor Erroll Davis the system might have to cut the fiscal year 2011 budget by that much, in addition to $265 million in cuts already planned for that year.

Legislative leaders now say the legislative paring won't be as deep as $300 million, and education officials say they can't say which of the threatened cuts they'll actually make until the legislature sets a budget.

In the meantime, planning will continue for graduate medical education here, though, said Dr. Barbara Schuster, dean of the medical campus in Athens, a partnership between the Medical College of Georgia and the University of Georgia.

Schuster plans to hire an associate dean to plan and coordinate graduate medical education for the Athens campus.

Administrators at three area hospitals have been talking with medical campus administrators about starting graduate medical programs in their hospitals.

None of the three hospitals' governing boards has agreed to sign on to participate in medical residencies.

But administrators at two of them, Athens Regional Medical Center and Gainesville's Northeast Georgia Health System, say they favor the idea because it will help their communities fill growing shortages of physicians.

"We are still most interested in this. Study after study has shown that where folks do their residencies, that's where they stay. I guess I do think it's going to happen," said Northeast Georgia CEO and President Jim Gardner.

"I think in the long run it's got to happen," said ARMC CEO Jack Drew.

St. Mary's Healthcare System CEO Don McKenna was unavailable for comment last week.

Some big questions remain unanswered - including just what kinds of residencies the hospitals would host and how the residencies would be divided up among the hospitals.

Another big question, Gardner said, is who bears the cost.

A year of residency costs about $120,000 - for 20 residents, about $2.4 million a year, Gardner said.

The federal government chips in for most of the cost, but not all, according to consultants hired by the three hospitals.

"Hospitals cannot accept another unfunded mandate," Gardner said. "At the end of the day, this is really a state revenue question. It's a real question mark to our hospital to absorb the entire cost of graduate medical education, and there's the rub."

Having graduate medical education in a hospital also benefits patients, bringing energy, as well as the latest knowledge, into hospital corridors.

Residents help provide care to patients under the guidance and supervision of more experienced physicians.

But installing such programs also changes the very culture of a hospital, said the hospital administrators. The hospital's medical staff becomes responsible not only for treating patients, but training new doctors as well.

If higher administrators do wind up cutting out the $5.9 million penciled in for graduate medical education, the medical campus would open as planned this year, but students might have to study part of the time out of the area.

Beginning in the third year of medical school - 2012 for the students who start this fall - medical students spend some of their time with doctors who are already residents, observing what goes on in patient care and graduate medical education.

Without residency programs in the Athens area, the Athens students will spend some of their time participating in residency programs in other parts of the state, Schuster said.

But planning will go on to build Athens-area residency programs, she said.

"I would try my best to continue to move forward. My time frame may be different," she said.