Kansas Recruitment Center Announces Placement - Physician joins Associates in Family Care in McPherson

Andrea Herrera, MD, joined Associates in Family Care, LLC, a clinic in McPherson in August.

“I lived in McPherson for several years while attending McPherson College and really enjoyed it here. I’m looking forward to connecting with old friends and making new ones,” said Herrera.

Dr. Herrera indicated that she will be joining two established partners who have made her feel very welcome in their clinic. Dr. Herrera has special interests in sports medicine, women’s health, pediatrics and disease prevention.

“I am very thrilled to have Dr. Herrera joining our practice,” said Dr. Brian Billings of Associates in Family Care. “She is Board Certified in Family Medicine and will be taking care of patients in all phases of their lives.”

In her hometown of Hesston, Kan., Herrera received an Associates of Arts degree in Liberal Studies from Hesston College in 1997. She completed a Bachelor of Science in Biology degree from McPherson College, graduating cum laude in 2000. In 2005 she completed her Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Wichita. Dr. Herrera completed her residency at the University of Texas Health Center in Tyler, Tex. in 2008.

Herrera and Associates in Family Care, LLC were matched through the Kansas Recruitment Center (KRC). The KRC, which provides placement assistance to rural health organizations, seeks to enhance the quality and quantity of health care professionals in rural Kansas by helping providers like Herrera find a practice in Kansas. The KRC is a not-for-profit program of Rural Health Education and Services at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Further information is available at ruralhealth.kumc.edu or by phone at 888-503-4221.

University of Kansas tops best universities to work for

WICHITA — Usually college rankings are all about how good a school is for students.

Glassdoor.com, which examines careers and companies, has a new study that will be published on its site Friday that takes a look at what colleges are like for the people who work there.

The University of Kansas is the No. 1 best place to work in the ranking of more than 100 large schools nationally.

H. David Wilson, dean of the KU School of Medicine-Wichita, isn’t surprised.

“I can tell you the people that work here are really a happy bunch,” he says. “We come to work because of the camaraderie, because of the support of the university and because of the mission.”

He says there is minimal turnover.

“People know that they could probably make more money working somewhere else,” Wilson says.

There are intangibles that trump dollars, though.

“People feel like we’re doing something important.”

By Carrie Rengers - http://blogs.kansas.com/haveyouheard/author/crengers/

Dr. Terri Cusick and the Wichita Center for Graduate Medical Education among Wichita's Health Care Heroes

Congratulations to Dr. Terri Cusick, KU School of Medicine-Wichita/Wichita Surgical Specialists PA and to the Wichita Center for Graduate Medical Education for being chosen as two of Wichita’s 2011 Health Care Heroes. Health Care Heroes honors companies, individuals and organizations for their contributions to improving health care in Wichita and the surrounding area. This year's honorees will be recognized at an event Sept. 22 and will be profiled in a special edition of the Wichita Business Journal on Sept. 23. Read more at Health Care Heroes - Wichita Business Journal 

Small-Town Doctors Made in a Small Kansas Town

The eight students at the University of Kansas medical school in Salina.
Front, from left, Rany Gilpatrick, Claire Hinrichsen and Sara Ritterling;
second row, Kayla Johnson, Erik Dill and Tyson Wisinger;
back, Jill Corpstein and Daniel Linville.

SALINA, Kan. — This state, so sparsely populated in parts that five counties have no doctors at all, has struggled for years to encourage young doctors to relocate to rural communities, where health problems are often exacerbated by a lack of even the most basic care.

On Friday, a new medical school campus opened here to provide a novel solution to the persistent problem: an inaugural class of eight aspiring doctors who will receive all their training in exactly the kind of small community where officials hope they will remain to practice medicine.

The new school, operated by the University of Kansas, is billed as the smallest in the nation to offer a full four-year medical education. More important, supporters say, the students will remain personally and professionally rooted in the agricultural center of the state — a three-hour drive from the university’s state-of-the-art medical and research facilities in Kansas City.

It will be a different experience, one that administrators say will better prepare students for the realities of a rural practice. Lectures on subjects like anatomy will be delivered via streaming video, lab work will be overseen by more practicing generalists and fewer academic specialists, and the problems of patients will tend more to the everyday than to the extraordinary.

And, the thinking goes, spouses picked up along the way are less likely to complain about moving to a small town.

“It just makes sense, and it’s great that it’s been put into practice,” said Alan Morgan, the president of the National Rural Health Association. “From a rural policy perspective, this is big news.”

Increasingly, medical schools across the country have been looking for ways to add to the ranks of physicians in rural areas. Some are using incentives like guaranteeing admission or forgiving loans to students who commit to practicing in small communities.

Others are recruiting students from rural areas and giving their applications preference, in the hope that they will return after graduating. And a number of schools encourage students to spend one year or more training in rural areas.

Kansas has tried each of these approaches in recent years, all of which are being used at the Salina campus. But with more than half the primary care physicians concentrated in the four largest counties, a vast majority of the state is considered medically underserved. And with many rural doctors near retirement age, the shortage could grow more acute.

The medical school program here, which is similar to a program at the Indiana University campus in Terre Haute, emerged as the top recommendation several years ago in a state report on the shortage of rural physicians.

It was supported by research suggesting that students who trained in urban areas faced hurdles in adjusting to the more bare-bones life of a country doctor, said Dr. Heidi Chumley, a senior associate dean at the University of Kansas.

“When they go off to the ritz and the glitz and pick up a spouse from the big city, it’s always hard to get them back to small-town America,” said Micheal Terry, president and chief executive of Salina Regional Health Center, which donated the three-story building being used by the school, as well as enough money to run it for a year. (The school cost $1.1 million to start and $1.1 million in reserve to operate it for the first year.)

Situated at the intersection of two highways, Salina, which has a population of nearly 50,000, serves a crucial role as a regional hub supporting surrounding rural communities; the hospital where the school is based receives patients who travel as many as four hours to get there.

University officials were relieved when one visitor from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, an accrediting body whose approval was considered a major hurdle, remarked with surprise that the area was not just cornfields.

Barbara Barzansky, co-secretary of the accrediting agency, said there had been concerns about the size of the school: Salina is the smallest city in the country to host a full medical degree program. But she said the committee found the resources to be adequate.

“It’s an interesting model, and if the outcomes are good, it could be a stimulus for other schools to do it,” Ms. Barzansky said.

On Friday, the eight students met for the first time for orientation, sitting nervously alongside one another before breaking into enthusiastic chatter. Dr. William Cathcart-Rake, a longtime physician here who is the director of the school, said that while they were the first class of “something very, very special,” they should not think of themselves as experiments.

Though a couple of students said they would have preferred to attend at the campuses in Kansas City or Wichita — one plans to commute from there — the rest said the smaller school had been their first choice.

Most of them grew up in small towns themselves and have agreed, in exchange for free tuition and monthly stipends, to start their careers in rural areas.

They know the life of a rural physician is not easy. Patients tend to be older, poorer and often uninsured. The job generally pays less than lucrative specialties. And many rural doctors have so little support that they are essentially on call permanently.

But the students also spoke firsthand of the need for doctors — one recalled a half-hour drive to the city, relieved by four Advil and an ice pack, to see a doctor about his broken arm.

“I’m a small-town girl, and I always wanted to be back in a small town,” said Kayla Johnson, 23, who grew up west of here in Odin (population 101) and did not like the idea of living in a city to study medicine. “When I heard that the Salina program was starting, I was so excited.”

Dr. Robert Moser, who had a rural practice before becoming the secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said he expected the number of students who go into primary care in rural areas to at least double each year.

And while the number is still small, he said, the impact on communities will be significant.

That would be the case in Jewell County, where the only two doctors have moved away, forcing the county to pay outside physicians to provide services a few days each month and to be on call for emergencies.

“It would be great to have a doctor full time here,” said Angela Murray, the administrator of the County Health Department. “Hopefully that will happen.”

Article courtesy of The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/health/policy/23doctors.html?_r=3

By A. G. SULZBERGER

Published: July 22, 2011

Pharmacies becoming scarce in rural Kansas counties

By Jan Biles

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

July 25, 2011

SCOTT CITY — Jena Brunswig understands how important it is for her and her husband, Jonathan, to keep the doors of their pharmacies in Lakin, Leoti and Scott City open.

Their Health Mart franchises are the only pharmacies in Kearny, Wichita and Scott counties, respectively. If they were to close, customers — many of them elderly — would have to drive 45 minutes to an hour to have their prescriptions filled and, of course, drive the same distance home.

Six Kansas counties are without a pharmacy, while 30 counties have only one.

"We originally opened a pharmacy in the Wichita County Health Center in Leoti about 15 years ago," Brunswig, who has a doctorate degree in pharmacy from The University of Kansas, said.

Thirteen years ago, the couple opened J&J Pharmacy in the Kearny County Health Center, and in 2003 they purchased the Scott City business.

Her husband, who also has a doctorate degree in pharmacy from KU, serves as a consultant for rural hospitals and nursing homes in Kearny, Finney, Lane, Scott and Wichita counties.

Brunswig said their pharmacies employ 20 to 25 full-time workers and about 20 to 25 part-time employees during the summer and holiday season.

"With the declining population, it's difficult to have enough people to run a business," she said.

Even more difficult is finding pharmacists who want to work and live in small western Kansas towns. So, the Brunswigs rely on "growing our own" through the KU School of Pharmacy curriculum that places students in communities for a one-month rotation. The curriculum allows community pharmacists to mentor students as they gain real-world experience.

"All the pharmacists we've hired have grown up here," she said.

Brunswig said she and her husband recently hired KU pharmacy students from Scott City and Leoti who wanted to return to their hometowns to begin their careers.

"They'll typically stay five years and then move on, although some marry and stay here," she said. "The KU perceptorship has increased our ability to find staff."

Abby Amick, director of Wabaunsee County Economic Development, said that county has been without a pharmacy since 1988, when its owner retired.

"When I started working here, it was one of my biggest concerns," Amick said.

Talks about establishing a satellite office through a pharmacy in a neighboring county was aborted when it became apparent it would be too costly to staff the pharmacy and pay overhead, she said.

"It's all the regulations that caused people not to be interested," she said, explaining how the satellite office would be required to have a full-time pharmacist to dispense and monitor the medications.

Amick said Alma residents can drive 16 miles to Wamego to pick up medications, while Alta Vista residents can travel to Council Grove, about 15 miles away, to fill prescriptions. A Rossville pharmacy makes deliveries to the Lake Wabaunsee and Eskridge areas, and a Topeka pharmacy also delivers to Lake Wabaunsee.

In addition, several area pharmacies offer mail-order services.

Brunswig said mail-order pharmacy services are a growing threat to brick-and-mortar pharmacies because they can provide medications more cheaply and be delivered to a person's mailbox.

"Schools, hospitals and the county have gone to mail-order prescriptions," she said. "It's cheaper for them to provide health insurance if they have this mail-order rider."

However, Brunswig said, mail-order pharmacies can't provide medications the day a person becomes ill or runs out of medication.

"Waiting three days for an antibiotic from mail order is not quality care," she said.

Consequently, the Brunswigs' pharmacies fill and deliver prescriptions to elderly residents who live in town and sometimes to rural areas.

"I hope that the population sustains our business, and the health insurance legislation will not inhibit our health care service," she said. "There are a lot of unknowns, and so many things are out of our control. The future of hospitals, clinics and pharmacies is unknown."

Article courtesy of The Topeka Capital-Journal.  View article at: 

http://cjonline.com/news/2011-07-25/pharmacies-becoming-scarce-rural-kansas-counties#.Ti6mheamMy4

2011 Rural Kansas Photography Contest

Once again it is time for the Rural Kansas Photography contest, presented by Rural Health Education and Services.

Photos submitted should depict Kansas as a great place to live, work, and play. Winning photos will be published and prizes will be awarded.

Photographs are due by September 19, 2011.

For more information, contest rules, and entry forms please go to http://ruralhealth.kumc.edu/photocontest/index_info.html

Rural Health Welcomes Jenifer Yuza

Rural Health Education and Services welcomes Jenifer Yuza as the new Marketing and Communications Coordinator. In this role she will be coordinating the production of Kansas Connections and all marketing activities of RHES.  You can contact Jenifer directly at jyuza@kumc.edu . Welcome to RHES, Jenifer!