Partnership to Create 500 Residencies
By Sean Price

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When Texas Christian University (TCU) and the University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC) announced they would establish an allopathic medical school in Fort Worth in 2019, one of the biggest concerns focused on new residencies. Without more residency slots, all those new medical students would be graduating into a state that already has too few residency positions to train new physicians.

Not long ago, officials at the TCU-UNTHSC medical school in January assured the Texas Medical Association that the new school was collaborating with area hospitals to create graduate medical education positions. 

On Monday, one of those collaborations came to fruition when UNTHSC announced that it is partnering with Medical City Healthcare to develop about 500 residency positions over the next seven years at its 14 hospitals around the Dallas-Fort Worth area. New programs in internal medicine and general surgery will be included.

Creating residency positions is an important tool in combatting physician shortages nationally and statewide. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) estimated that the nationwide shortage had reached 30,500 in 2015. If current trends hold, AAMC projects it could grow to as much as 104,900 by 2030. Texas is 41st among all states in the number of physicians per 100,000 residents, and it is 47th in the number of primary care physicians, AAMC says. 

Erol Akdamar, president of Medical City Healthcare, says creating residency slots not only will produce more physicians, it also will help Texas retain the physicians who graduate from its medical schools.

“Studies show that physicians often remain in the communities where they complete their residencies," Akdamar said. "Not only will this investment result in significant additional physician capacity, but we know that when we convert facilities into teaching hospitals patient care gets even better."

The academic sponsor of the new residencies will be UNTHSC, which will be opening the allopathic medical school with TCU and which already runs the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine in Fort Worth. Medical City Healthcare, which is owned by HCA Healthcare, employs 17,000 at its hospitals across North Texas. 


Last Updated On

May 17, 2018

Originally Published On

May 15, 2018