DOVER — Bayhealth and ChristianaCare are teaming up with the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (PCOM) to strengthen Delaware’s physician workforce.
The three entities have launched a new collaborative clinical campus model that will place five third-year medical students across the two health systems rather than training within a single system. The system will be called the Delaware Clinical Community Campus.
Dr. Gary Siegelman of Bayhealth, ChristianaCare Chief Academic Officer Dr. Brian Levine and PCOM President and CEO Dr. Jay Feldstein said the initiative will give students a unique view that they may only ever find in a location like Delaware.
“Delaware is a great teaching ground. We have an incredibly diverse state in terms of patient populations with urban, suburban and certainly rural,” Feldstein told the Delaware Business Times, calling the experience a “rich education” for students who chooses to learn in the area.
The goal, they all emphasized, is to deepen the pipeline of physicians who train, complete residency and ultimately practice in Delaware, particularly in Kent and Sussex counties where workforce shortages persist.
“This really helps build the pipeline because those students frequently do stay here then for their training and many of them stay to work here,” Siegelman said.
The collaboration comes as Delaware continues to grapple with physician recruitment challenges, especially in rural and southern parts of the state. Healthcare leaders have long noted that physicians are significantly more likely to practice where they complete residency training and that residency placement often follows medical school clinical rotations.
Research from the Association of American Medical Colleges showcases that fact, finding that more than half of physicians remain in the region where they complete their graduate medical education.
By embedding students in Kent and Sussex counties during medical school, the three organizations hope to increase the likelihood that those students will also pursue residency programs in Delaware and ultimately establish long-term practices in the state.
It also benefits a recent push made via the Rural Health Transformation Program which awarded Delaware with $157 million for projects that could greatly enhance health care, as well as its workforce, in some parts of the First State.
PCOM serves as Delaware’s osteopathic medical school partner through the state’s Delaware Institute for Medical Education and Research (DIMER) program which reserves slots for Delaware students at PCOM, as well as Sidney Kimmel Medical College. While the new collaborative model builds on longstanding relationships between PCOM and Delaware hospitals, the cross-system structure is new.
The three said that clinical training capacity, sometimes referred to as “white coat space,” has become increasingly competitive across the Philadelphia and Delaware Valley region. The shared-campus model allows institutions to maximize clinical exposure opportunities while expanding overall training capacity and emphasizing flexibility in the field.
“I don’t know of any other real campus that involves multiple health care systems. That’s fascinating and very cool and shows collaboration that can only occur in a small state where we’re all friends with each other, know each other and want to help each other to provide better care for the community,” Levine told DBT.