WALTON COUNTY, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) – The FSU Family Medicine Residency Program now has more than a dozen doctors completing their final training in Walton County.
“We finally have a full complement of residents,” said Dr. Joshua Hodge, the family medicine residency program director. “We are now training 18 residents; it’s a three-year training, so six residents per class.”
Leaders say Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast launched the program to help tackle the Panhandle’s primary care shortage.
“The goal is to keep the majority of them in the general area, in the Panhandle of Florida,” Hodge said.
The residents are not just learning inside the hospital and at the family medicine residency clinic. They are working with community partners across Walton County to help meet the demand for care.
“We have searched for any and all opportunities to not just maintain this clinic down here in the south,” said Hodge, “but spread into the north part of the county where it is the most underserved.”
A big part of that demand is patients who do not have coverage.
“Almost 70 percent of our patients have no insurance of any type,” Hodge said.
More residents also means more patients — and more space needed at the family medicine residency clinic.
The facility is expanding. Three new exam rooms and one new integrated medicine room will bring the total number of patient rooms to 12.
“We moved people out of shared and private offices,” said Hodge. “We’ve converted those to exam rooms.”
With more physicians and more room for patients, program leaders say they can now take 900 appointments a month, with that number expected to grow.
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