SACRAMENTO -- An innovative UC Davis program, designed to help increase health-care access in rural areas of the state, enters a new phase this week with the formal announcement of its first clerkship training site.
On Friday, April 3, UC Davis School of Medicine and the Tahoe Forest Health System plan to celebrate the university's Rural-PRIME program during a signing ceremony in Truckee. The event takes place during a special luncheon beginning at 11:30 a.m. at the Cedar House Sport Hotel, 10918 Brockway Road, Truckee.
The ceremony will recognize Truckee as the first official site beyond Sacramento where the School of Medicine will train its medical students as the next generation of rural physicians. Officials from each health system will sign an agreement to formalize the new program.
Rural-PRIME is part of the University of California's "Programs in Medical Education" (or PRIME), which is designed to produce physician leaders who are trained in and committed to helping California's underserved communities. By 2015, experts predict the state will face a significant shortage of physicians, with rural communities struggling to provide health care with fewer doctors per resident than in urban areas.
Rural patients have poorer outcomes than their urban counterparts on several health measures, including higher levels of chronic conditions, higher rates of hospitalizations and higher rates of cancer deaths. The Rural-PRIME program was specifically developed to address problems with access to care and help reduce the health-care disparities frequently found among rural populations.
"Tahoe Forest Health System is a model of excellence in rural health care and offers our students a first-rate learning opportunity," said Thomas Nesbitt, executive associate dean for the UC Davis School of Medicine. "It will help students to understand the importance of teamwork and evidence-based medicine, while also allowing them to experience a broad scope of practice, great relationships with patients and the knowledge that physicians can make a big difference in smaller communities. It's a terrific pathway for medical school graduates, who will learn the need and value of being a doctor in a rural area."
As one of the five PRIME curriculums within the UC medical school system, Rural-PRIME increased the number of students being trained as physicians at UC Davis by about 10 percent. It provides a range of education, including training in public health issues and the use of leading-edge medical technologies such as telemedicine to provide specialty medical care in remote locations. The program will include additional clerkship training sites in rural areas of the Central Valley, foothill region and northern reaches of the state.
"Rural-PRIME is the latest is a series of important affiliations between our health system and UC Davis," said Bob Schepper, chief executive officer for Tahoe Forest Health System, who noted that Tahoe Forest joined the UC Davis Cancer Care Network last fall and is planning other collaborations as well. "We're excited to have UC Davis medical students learning alongside our physicians because we think it will help convince these doctors-in-training to eventually establish primary care practices in smaller communities like ours."
Clerkship rotations at sites such as Tahoe Forest will last between four to eight weeks, depending on the specialty. Students will rotate through the departments of pediatrics, OB-GYN and family practice. They will remain in contact with their School of Medicine instructors via telemedicine connections between Truckee and Sacramento, which are the same type of high-tech videoconferencing connections now being used in the Cancer Care Network.