Rural Hospitals Face Doctor Shortages

Tuesday, December 27th 2005, 10:52 am

By: News On 6

PHOENIX (AP) _ Health care experts say physician recruitment and retention is a perennial problem in Arizona, but the stakes are much higher in rural areas as the state's population soars.

According to the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, Arizona ranks among the states with the lowest number of working nurses and physicians per capita. Even more troubling is that according to the National Rural Health Association, one out of 10 of the nation's doctors practice in rural areas, where one-fourth of the nation's population lives.

``We have people out in the middle of nowhere come here and are on death's doorstep,'' said Jason Taylor, a medical resident at Kingman Regional Medical Center.

One of the challenges residents and physicians face in rural health care is the lack of specialists, placing the burden on rural doctors to fill in the gaps of knowledge and develop an eye for the subtle nature of life-threatening ailments.

``They have to have the ability to anticipate and know what your limits are and what your resources are,'' said Lori Kemper, who oversees the Midwestern University's rural residency program, which was started to help attract more doctors to places like Kingman, Sierra Vista and Yuma.

Attracting primary-care physicians has also been a problem, said Alison Hughes, director of the Rural Hospital Flexibility Program at UA. That, despite attractive loan-repayment programs, rural medical rotations by the UA and Midwestern's residency program, and federal money earmarked for a Midwestern residency program in Sierra Vista this year.

Hughes says that if a medical resident comes from a rural community, he or she is much more likely to practice in such a community. That means medical schools need to recruit rural students more vigorously.

``I've worked in the rural health office for 20 years,'' she said. ``Recruitment for rural physicians and nurses was a huge area. Twenty years later, it's just as huge.''