Missouri’s Department of Health and Senior Services estimates that 108 out of 114 counties in the state are designated as underserved in terms of physicians. In response to this shortage, CoxHealth, St. John’s and the MU School of Medicine in Columbia will spend the next year identifying the strategies and resources needed to increase enrollment at the school and expand educational opportunities for students at Cox and St. John’s hospitals and clinics.
“We plan to build on the existing medical education partnership between Cox, St. John’s and MU,” says Robert Bezanson, CoxHealth president and CEO. “Our goal is to not only produce more physicians and improve patient access to care, but to increase the medical students’ access to quality clinical education in our area of the state.”
Of the more than 75 students who received training in southwest Missouri since 2005 through MU’s rural track program, 48 students were trained through the partnership with CoxHealth and St. John’s. The program encourages physicians to complete part of their clinical education in underserved areas and to then practice in Missouri.
“A large part of our service area is rural, so having medical students available in these clinics not only helps them complete their education, it also introduces them to the area and the benefits of practicing here in the Ozarks,” explained Jon Swope, St. John’s Health System President / CEO. “We are looking forward to possibly expanding many educational opportunities, which benefits both physicians and patients.”
The Association of American Medical Colleges has called on all medical schools to increase class size by 30 percent to address the physician shortage not in only Missouri, but across the country. For each of the past two years, MU has received more than 1,200 applications to medical school, but only has the capacity to accept 96 new medical students annually.