OSF HealthCare St. Joseph Medical Center in Bloomington plans to start a family practice residency program next year.
President Lynn Fulton said Tuesday the goal is to attract more physicians to the community as more doctors retire, noting it's getting harder to find doctors to practice medicine in central Illinois.
“We are competing with the coasts, we are competing with the larger urban areas, and it’s getting harder and harder (to recruit doctors),” Fulton said. “When we are able to bring residents here to our local community, they train here, they become comfortable there, they start their families here.”
Fulton said there’s already a nationwide doctor shortage and that has complicated succession planning while more physicians move closer to retirement age and fewer are stepping in to take their place.
“Where we used to see numerous (resumes) for a need, we may get one or two today,” Fulton explained.
U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Peoria, is seeking a $700,000 appropriation to renovate space for the residency program through Community Project Funding (CPF). That program replaced congressional earmarks that Congress banned in 2011 amid concerns of money being wasted on so-called pork barrel projects.
"We have changed the format in terms of more transparency and many more checks and balances when it comes to these funding mechanisms,” said LaHood, who expects Congress to hold a hearing on the funding request this summer.
Fulton said if Congress doesn’t approve funding, OSF will seek other funding sources and try to “make due with that we have today.”
Pam Meiner, community relations coordinator for OSF HealthCare in Bloomington, said OSF plans to renovate space in the lower level of Eastland Medical Plaza II that is attached to the medical center.
The three-year program would have up to six residents at a time, Meiner said.
