Rural Residency Planning and Development Program - Applicant Facility Type: Urban hospital for RTP Program Pathway: 1) General Primary Care and High Need Specialty; 2) Maternal Health and Obstetrics Residency Medical Specialties: Anesthesia, cardiology, emergency medicine, endocrinology, ENT, geriatrics/palliative, gynecology, internal medicine, MFM, neurology, obstetrics, pediatrics, podiatry, pulmonology, trauma, surgery, psychiatry, addiction, dentistry, hospice, radiology, lactation, community medicine, critical care medicine, gastroenterology, athletic medicine, and orthopedics Residency Format: New Rural Track Program (RTP; new program accreditation). Sponsoring Institution Name and Location Lincoln Medical Education Partnership located in Lincoln, NE ACGME Sponsor Program Code: 1203031187 ACGME Number for Sponsoring Institution: 300706 Rural Target County: Saline County and surrounding counties in southeast Nebraska Funding Amount Requested: $750,000 Program Sustainability Option: Option 1 - Rural hospital new residency program Expected Accreditation: July 2028 First Resident Matriculation Dates: July 1, 2029 List of Recent HRSA Awarded Grants (5 years prior): None Bryan Medical Center (BMC), Crete Area Medical Center (CAMC), and Lincoln Medical Educational Partnership seek to launch the Crete Family Medicine Residency Program on July 1, 2029 with an initial cohort of two residents, followed by the addition of two residents annually, reaching full capacity of six residents by the third year (2-2-2). This new rural track program seeks to expand access to high-quality health care in rural communities and build a strong pipeline of rural physicians to serve future generations. The program will operate through an integrated urban-rural training model, with CAMC (Critical Access Hospital) as the primary rural training site and BMC (Inpatient Prospective Payment System hospital) serving as the primary tertiary training site in an urban setting. The project addresses significant healthcare workforce shortages affecting rural Nebraska. Fourteen Nebraska counties currently lack a primary care physician, 85 rural communities are designated as medically underserved for primary care services, and more than half of Nebraska counties are classified as maternity care deserts. Rural communities also face increasing physician burnout, an aging physician workforce, shortages of behavioral health providers, and limited access to preventive healthcare services. The primary geographic area served by the project is Saline County, Nebraska, and surrounding rural counties. Crete, Nebraska, the location of CAMC, has a population of approximately 7,436 and serves a diverse and medically underserved population, including a large Hispanic and Latino community representing nearly half of the city’s population. The residency program will ultimately serve rural patients across Nebraska The Crete Family Medicine Residency Program represents a comprehensive, sustainable investment in Nebraska’s rural health workforce by creating a new rural Residency Track Program to recruit, train, and retain family physicians to meet the growing demands of rural Nebraska. Through the collaboration between Bryan Medical Center, Crete Area Medical Center, and Lincoln Medical Education Partnership, this program seeks to address workforce shortages, physician burnout, and preventative diseases, while increasing access to maternal care and behavioral health services. The Crete Family Medicine Residency Programs seeks to support Nebraska’s rural communities with access to high-quality, comprehensive care for generations to come.
