Address: 7800 Niles Street, Bakersfield, CA 93306-4922 Project Director Name: Carol Stewart, MD FAAFP Contact Phone Number: 6613284284 Email Address: Carol.Stewart@clinicasierravista.org Website Address: Residency Program: http://riobravofmrp.org/ 1. Name: Rio Bravo Family Medicine Residency Program 2. Discipline: Family Medicine 3. Type of Application: Expansion Application 4. Eligible Entity: Federally qualified health center, as defined in section 1905(I)(2)(B) of the Social Security Act[42 U.S.C. 1396d(I)(2)(B)]; Residency sponsored by Clinica Sierra Vista 5. Program Start Year: 2014 6. Organization website address: https://www.clinicasierravista.org/ 7. Program Overview: The Rio Bravo Family Medicine Residency program (RBFMRP) is proud to be an ACGME-accredited, HRSA funded Teaching Health Center. Sponsored by Clinica Sierra Vista, a healthcare organization of 20 federally qualified health centers, RBFMRP has an academic affiliation with the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Founded in 2014, the heart of the program is the East Niles Community Health Center in Bakersfield, California where the residents see their continuity patients. In the last academic year, the Rio Bravo residents provided over 15,000 visits to their very underserved patient population at this site. Over 65% of their patients qualify for MediCal, with another 10-12% being uninsured. The patients are predominately Latino, including migrant farm workers and their families, homeless and other low-income patients from our surrounding HPSA/MUA. The residency continues to prove its worth to the community. In addition to the patients the residents see while training, the graduates are adding valuable capacity to the region’s primary care workforce. As of June 30, 2021, the program has had 31 graduates, with twenty-one continuing to work and practice in Kern and Fresno Counties, including thirteen now employed by Clinica Sierra Vista. Additionally, two of the gradua
tes are US military veterans and twenty-one are members of Underrepresented Minorities, as are 12 of the current 24 residents. All of the graduates have passed their American Board of Family Medicine certification examination on their first attempt. As the only Family Medicine residency in Kern County and faced with a population growing faster than its physician supply, the program applied to the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) to expand from 6-6-6 to 8-8-8 in 2018. The residency began growing in July 2019 to eight residents per class. In order to meet the higher expenses not covered under our HRSA funding, the RBFMRP reached out to the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development to assist in bridging this shortfall. Unfortunately, the state has undergone a series of transitions, including a change in the level of funding and a restructuring of its departments. The new Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI) is continuing its support of Teaching Health Centers, but at a more limited level. This calendar year, this will result in an award that is $468,333 less than in 2021. 8. Total Resident FTE Positions Requested to be Funded: Seeking assistance from this expansion grant to try to bridge this funding gap, as the program hopes to make significant contributions to the health of its patients by providing a pipeline of additional Family Physicians for this underserved area. We need 24 FTE Resident Positions to be funded, our 18 current positions, plus six expanded resident FTE above the baseline resident FTEs trained in AY 2018-2019, (6-6-6) to (8-8-8). 9. Resident FTE Positions Requested to be Funded for AY 2022-2023: We are requesting funding for six resident FTE positions (2-2-2) for AY 2022-2023. 10. Rotation Sites: Residents will perform rotations at Kern Medical and Bakersfield Memorial Hospital, both have provided resident training in past academic years. Neither facility claims our residents on
their cost report.