Sacred Heart announced today that it will start a three-year residency program for internal medicine thanks to an Innovate Workforce grant from Florida’s Great Northwest – $200K – and $1M of state funding. Sacred Heart will match the grant with $312K of its own funds.
The program will start July 2009 with three residents and eventually expand to 15 doctors.
Sacred Heart President & CEO Patrick Madden said at press conference today, “We must add to the clinical depth in this community. We, under Executive VP Peter Heckathorn’s leadership, have been working on this program for five years.”
Heckathorn added that there is real shortage of internal medicine physicians. Sacred Heart hopes to convince the graduate residents to stay in the area after they finish their residency and will offer an incentive program for graduate residents who commit early to practice in Northwest Florida and/or student loan forgiveness for remaining in the region for a specified period.
Each doctor who stays will have $1 million impact on our economy.
Dr. Paul Baraco, Sacred Heart’s Chief Medical Officer, pointed at the press conference that he had practiced in a similar Pensacola program in the 1970s. Of his class of six residents in internal medicine, two stayed here to practice. Two others went got further training and returned to practice cardiology and oncology.
Currently Sacred Heart has residency programs in pediatrics and OB/GYN. About 40 percent of the graduate residents from those programs stay in the region.