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Dr. Ololade Oladimeji and her team pose at Peridot Health Medical clinic in McFarland, which Oladimeji opened just a year ago. \u201cPatients are grateful to have us here.\u201d (Photo via NNPA)<\/p>\nBy Cecil Egbele
Bakersfield News
Observer<\/p>\n
(This story was produced for the USC Center for Health Journalism\u2019s Ethnic Media Collaborative.)<\/p>\n
\u201cKern County chose me,\u201d said Dr. Ololade Oladimeji. \u201cI did not exactly choose Kern County.\u201d<\/p>\n
Known as Dr. Lola, Oladimeji is a Nigerian-born internist who trained at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology in Ogbomoso. She came to Bakersfield in 2012 when her husband\u2019s oil and gas job relocated them from Texas. She has not left.<\/p>\n
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Dr. Ololade Oladimeji and her team pose at Peridot Health Medical clinic in McFarland, which Oladimeji opened just a year ago. \u201cPatients are grateful to have us here.\u201d (Photo via NNPA)<\/p>\n
A year ago, she opened Peridot Health Medical Clinic, a primary care clinic in McFarland, a small, largely farmworker community north of Bakersfield, because so few clinics and providers served the area. \u201cPatients are grateful to have us here and are happy to have more choices in their location and not having to travel to Bakersfield for their primary care needs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Her patients travel from nearby Delano, Wasco, Shafter, Lost Hills, and even from outside Kern County \u2014 distances that pale in comparison to the roughly 12,000 miles Oladimeji traveled from Nigeria to serve them.<\/p>\n
Oladimeji\u2019s story of arriving in Kern County by circumstance and staying by conviction is far from unusual. The county\u2019s healthcare system has long depended on doctors trained abroad.<\/p>\n
But recent decisions coming out of Washington, D.C., brought home the extent of Kern County\u2019s dependence on foreign-trained talent and exposed the county\u2019s vulnerability.<\/p>\n
On January 1, the Trump administration imposed a 39-country travel ban, followed by a freeze on immigrant visas from 75 countries. Both actions threatened work permits, visa extensions, and green card processing for foreign-trained medical professionals already in the country.<\/p>\n
While the visa ban was quietly lifted in May, local practitioners and local hospitals and clinics are still wrestling with how they can protect this vital pipeline and the community that depends upon it. Oladimeji said these kinds of visa restrictions will worsen the doctor shortage problem.<\/p>\n
The federal flip-flopping on visas exposed the county\u2019s dependence on foreign-trained talent.<\/p>\n
Dr. Ololade Oladimeji, known as \u201cDr. Lola,\u201d runs Peridot Health Medical clinic in McFarland, serving a largely rural, farmworking community. A Physician Desert<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re definitely in a physician desert,\u201d said Dr. Terrance McGill, a family medicine physician born in Bakersfield who attended medical school at Ross University in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n
The shortage McGill describes has roots that go back nearly five decades. On March 5, 1978, the federal government formally designated Kern County a Health Professional Shortage Area for primary care. That designation has never been lifted. Today, Kern County has 41 primary care physicians per 100,000 residents \u2014 it ranks in the bottom third among California\u2019s 57 counties \u2014 and well below the state average of 61 per 100,000.<\/p>\n
McGill said he returned home in part because \u201cwe needed people who looked like me.\u201d He now serves patients in Kern County and runs Maverick Medical Care, his private practice.<\/p>\n
Dr. Terrance McGill is a Bakersfield native who attended medical school at Ross University in the Caribbean before opening his private practice in Kern County, Maverick Medical care. Here he is pictured with his wife and three chidlren.More than 60 percent of Kern County\u2019s physicians come from medical schools abroad, according to data from the Medical Board of California.<\/p>\n
\u201cBakersfield and Kern County is one of the hardest places to recruit to,\u201d Oladimeji said, recalling her experience as a physician recruiter at Adventist Health Bakersfield. There are locations that boast better weather and amenities, she said. \u201cMost U.S.-born, U.S.-trained doctors are not attracted to a place like Bakersfield.\u201dMcGill, the native Bakersfield doctor who attended medical school abroad, agreed that domestic graduates have a fuller roster of choices around the state and nation, including coastal hospitals with higher salaries and cleaner air; Kern County\u2019s air quality ranks among the nation\u2019s worst.<\/p>\n
Oladimeji said that underserved areas like Kern mean higher patient volume. Lower socioeconomic and educational backgrounds can shape patients\u2019 health outcomes, she said, contributing to higher disease rates, lower insurance reimbursement, and lower physician compensation. These factors impact recruitment. \u201cWe had to rely on foreign medical graduates, usually requiring visa sponsorships. That has been a way of getting physicians here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kern County has backfilled its chronic physician shortage with foreign-born and foreign-trained doctors for decades. For those who do come to Kern County from abroad, they often arrive on J-1 or H-1B visas that are tied to sponsoring institutions. Foreign-born physicians face a narrower set of work options and so they remain.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter residency, usually they stay about two years, and then they find that Kern County is not a bad place to be,\u201d McGill said. \u201cBecause they\u2019re already moving from different countries, it\u2019s easy for them to set their roots here. They\u2019re not born in LA or San Francisco and trying to get back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Threats to the Pipeline<\/p>\n
One of the pipelines routing these physicians into Kern County runs through Niles Street in East Bakersfield\u2014the Rio Bravo Family Medicine Residency Program, operated by Clinica Sierra Vista.<\/p>\n
The primary purpose of the program is to train and retain family medicine residents and physicians dedicated to serving the underserved in Kern and Fresno Counties. The program receives roughly 1,600 applications each year, a mix of citizens and foreign-born physicians, for 10 spots.<\/p>\n
Dr. Hector Arreaza, a Venezuelan-born and educated physician who was among the 12-year-old program\u2019s first residents, now teaches there. \u201cBefore this program, all these communities around this clinic that were underserved had no place to go for primary care,\u201d he said. Residents see patients in the clinic and also go to hospitals, attend health fairs, and run a street medicine program for Bakersfield\u2019s homeless population.<\/p>\n
Dr. Hector Arreaza, a Venezuelan-born and educated physician was among Rio Bravo\u2019s Family Medicine Residency Program\u2019s first residents\u2014now teaches there. \u201cThey are caring for the whole community,\u201d Arreaza said. \u201cThe activities are not limited to the walls of the clinic.\u201d
This whole community care model was threatened under the recent visa freeze.<\/p>\n
During that time, McGill heard fear from his peers, \u201calmost anger,\u201d he said, because those imported doctors know \u201chow much they\u2019ve benefited the system. Everyone needs help, but you\u2019re blocking off that pipeline to bring people over to assist.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump administration quietly lifted the freeze in May. But the unease remains.<\/p>\n
Oladimeji said that if such a policy returned, \u201cit will definitely limit the availability, recruitment, and retention of physicians to Kern County. \u201d
The county is not without other new efforts to address physician shortages, especially through residency programs. Rio Bravo. Bakersfield Memorial Hospital recently launched a residency program in partnership with Morehouse School of Medicine, a historically Black medical school with a mission of training physicians for underserved communities The program\u2019s second cohort arrives this July.<\/p>\n
For now, Kern County\u2019s health system still relies heavily on foreign-born physicians committed to practicing in the region.\u201dI see a lot of opportunities to directly impact people\u2019s lives and health in these kinds of communities,\u201d Oladimeji said. \u201cThis resonates with my purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Cecil EgbeleBakersfield NewsObserver (This story was produced for the USC Center for Health Journalism\u2019s Ethnic Media Collaborative.)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152],"class_list":["post-391590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}