The 43 senior medical students who recently learned they’d be conducting their residencies in Baton Rouge not only filled all of the available residency spots in LSU’s four graduate medical programs here, they could also help local hospitals address a growing need for doctors in the future.
George Karam, director of LSU’s internal medicine residency program, says students are most likely to continue training within 100 miles of where they complete their residency. That means the annual National Resident Match Day, held one week ago today, often provides communities like Baton Rouge with the personnel they will depend on to serve them in the future.
In 1993, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation sponsored a group, Karam among them, to look at ways to improve future medical care in Baton Rouge. The group published a paper arguing that because 60% to 70% of residents remain in the area where they train, the highest potential for attracting primary care physicians lies in the medical residency programs.
The findings, Karam says, are still relevant today. Since the 1993 paper was published, Karam says, the internal medicine program has kept track of its own graduates, finding that 76% still practice in Louisiana.
Today, Karam says many Baton Rouge hospitals worry about the lack of primary physicians and other personnel—a problem that is also affecting the rest of the country.
In 2012, an article published in the Annals of Family Medicine estimated that the country would need an additional 52,000 primary care physicians to keep up with population growth and increased access to health care.
Closer to home, the 2012 Health Occupations Outlook conducted by LSU forecast 2,892 new primary care physicians would be needed in Louisiana by 2020.
While 43 new doctors-in-training filled all of the available spots at LSU’s graduate medical programs in Baton Rouge—which include emergency medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, and psychiatry—LSU residency programs across the state matched a total of 207 students.
—Kevin Thibodeaux
