Bahnsen Miller understands the challenges—and the damages—of Louisiana’s budget woes firsthand. You can’t ignore them if you’ve been in one of the state’s doctor training programs, constantly at risk of calamity.
The 31-year-old internal medicine doctor ran into questions about financial stability and watched Louisiana lose top talent to its neighbors as he recruited people to train at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in the state’s capital. The general surgery program lost applicants who went out of state because of the uncertainty, he says.
“Most residents stay in the state where they train, so if we lose a student, say, to Mississippi or Alabama for residency, there’s a good chance they’re not going to come back to Louisiana,” says Miller, one of the hospital’s chief residents last year.
The Associated Press reports Louisiana’s deep, persistent budget troubles are endangering the future of the state’s medical training programs. Proposed cuts to hospitals could damage the stream of new doctors for a generation, in a state that has chronic shortages of health care workers and some of the worst health care outcomes in the nation.
And just the chatter about the financial threats is already having ripple effects, with other states’ doctor-training programs cherry-picking some of Louisiana’s top talent.
“The dean of the School of Medicine tells me almost daily he’s getting calls from students saying, ‘Is this really where I need to train? Should I stay here or should I go someplace else?'” Larry Hollier, chancellor of the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, told state senators.
At Our Lady of the Lake, doctors-in-training make rounds as usual, checking patients, diagnosing ailments and selecting treatments. They ignore the question marks about their future as much as they can, trying to disregard the legislative haggling that threatens their programs.
“It does kind of make you think about where you should go, whether staying is worth it or not,” said Kevin Francioni, 24, a third-year LSU medical student training there.
