Rural Residency Planning and Development Program - Project Abstract Project Title: Cheshire Medical Center Rural Residency Planning and Development Program Applicant Organization Name: Cheshire Medical Center Address: 580 Court Street, Keene, NH 03431-1718 Eligible Entity Type: Rural Hospital Project Director Name: Karl Dietrich, MD, MPH Contact Information: kdietrich@Cheshire-Med.com; (603) 354-5400 Website Address: www.cheshire-med.org Residency Program Director Contact Information: Karl Dietrich, MD, MPH, kdietrich@Cheshire-Med.com Residency Type: Rural Residency Residency Specialty: Family Medicine Sponsoring Institution: Cheshire Medical Center Rural Target Area(s): Cheshire, Sullivan, Hillsborough counties in New Hampshire Funding Amount requested: $750,000 Program Sustainability Option: Option 1 Projected Number of Residents: 6-6-6 Expected ACGME Accreditation: April 2023 Residency Matriculation Dates: July 1, 2024 We propose, with the help of the HRSA Rural Residency Planning and Development grant, to create a new and innovative Family Medicine residency training program focused on the training of rural primary care physicians. Our residency will be based at Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock (Cheshire), a 163 licensed (94 reported) bed rural community-based hospital in Keene, NH serving the rural counties of Cheshire, Sullivan and Hillsborough. We will build on the academic support of the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Dartmouth and our long-standing academic and clinical affiliation with Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC), a rural tertiary academic medical center located to our north. We will target rural and underserved populations of both these and surrounding counties, addressing the primary health needs of our catchment area and those in neighboring Vermont. In addition to meeting the primary medical needs of our rural populations, our residency will engage young physicians in training in the critical work of public and community health and an appreciation of the management of the health of populations. It is undeniable that the social determinants of health and their implications are felt keenly in our rural communities, frequently amplifying the core acute, preventive, and chronic health needs of rural peoples. Our program will demand critical skill development in mental health and substance use assessment and management given the prevalence of these problems in our communities. The primary care physician for rural America must be prepared to face a landscape of rapid adaptation and change, from public health emergency management to team based high quality care delivery in a cost effective and high value system that is overburdened and underfunded. We believe we have embarked on a residency planning process that will achieve such aspirations and will amass the resources needed to succeed. Additionally, our Cheshire Family Medicine Residency (Cheshire FMR) will help to address the perennial and expensive challenge of recruitment of primary care physicians to rural regions. The data about practice patterns of newly minted physicians is well known, and our region is challenged, along with the rest of rural America, in recruiting well trained physicians prepared for the demands and challenges of rural practice. Our most important measurable objective and outcome will be the successful launching of our residency training program and its long term success, but this will be preceded by the challenge of recruitment of high quality residents and faculty with genuine interest and passion for rural medicine. Curricular design and planning, medical staff recruitment for teaching across the spectrum of specialties, development of appropriate evaluation and tracking systems are among some of the measurable objectives along the way that the planning grant will be central to insuring. We have consulted with Residency Program Solutions in our planning and intend to benefit from the resources of the HRSA supported technical center for fur
