CityView Magazine

There's a nationwide shortage of doctors, especially outside of major metropolitan areas. Entire towns, or even counties, often have to rely on a single physician, while neighboring cities enjoy a surplus of doctors for medical care. It's a hard truth. The reasons why can be even harder to accept. Most new doctors simply go into practice in the same area they do their residency training, because they're comfortable with their surroundings. And most medical residency programs are located in more densely-populated urban areas. These two realities have led to a noticeable decline in rural doctors over the years, as older physicians age out of the workforce. The disparity will only worsen in coming years. By 2030, North Carolina alone will need an additional 2,000 primary care physicians to treat the state's burgeoning population. Specialty physicians are in even shorter supply in the state. A quarter of North Carolina's 100 counties currently lack OB/GYN physicians, pediatricians, psychiatrists and general surgeons. "If there was ever a hotspot for the nation's physician shortage," said Cape Fear Valley CEO Mike Nagowski, "it's here in the southeastern part of North Carolina." Nagowski oversees the state's 8 th largest health system, which serves a vast swath of the region he refers to. Most of the territory is rural, making recruiting new doctors a never- ending challenge against larger healthcare markets like those in Charlotte and the Triangle. So Cape Fear Valley Health is changing strategy with a new medical residency program launched in June 2017. Its goal is to train new physicians fresh out of medical school from across the U.S. The hope is they stay to practice medicine in the region, once they complete their training. Cape Fear Valley's academic sponsor is Campbell University's Jerry M. Wallace School of Osteopathic Medicine. The residency program was originally conceived in 2010, soon after the Buies Creek school announced it planned to open the state's first new medical school in more than half a century. • • • • • Cape Fear Valley takes on one of healthcare's biggest challenges Changing the game

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