Alexander von Hafften and Lindsay Rodis
Updated: 33 minutes ago Published: 33 minutes ago
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/adn/I3BBWY5SWRH5FMNAQF4PF3DRO4.jpg)
Alaska faces a physician shortage. In December 2023, the Health Resources and Services Administration ranked Alaska 48th in meeting primary health care needs (21.85%), 22nd in meeting dental needs (34.98%), and 48th in meeting mental health needs (11.90%).
For more than 50 years, Alaska WWAMI Medical Education (a medical school affiliated with the University of Alaska Anchorage and the University of Washington School of Medicine) has played a vital role in educating and training Alaska’s future physicians. Although Alaska WWAMI’s class size recently increased to 30 students per year, that alone will not solve Alaska’s physician shortage problem.
Reasons for GME expansion
To attract more physicians to practice in Alaska, we need to increase graduate medical education (GME) opportunities.
GME is a necessary next step in a physician's professional education after medical school and is required in all states before they are eligible to receive unrestricted medical licensure.
Alaska requires a minimum of two years of GME, including residency, internship, and fellowship. However, Alaska has the lowest number of GME programs, number of GME trainees, and ratio of medical residents to state population in the nation. We believe this shortage is a significant barrier to addressing the state's health care needs.
The connection between GME and local doctors
Nationwide, approximately 1 in 7 physicians participate in GME programs. These trainees are responsible for 20% of hospitalized patient care and 40% of uninsured patient care, contributing $8.4 billion in patient care annually.
Also consider that resident retention rates typically remain high in the communities in which they train: For example, approximately 70% of Alaska family medicine residents remain in Alaska after completing their training, and this program alone trains more than 27% of the state's family medicine physicians.
Where do we go from here?
Although federal funding for GME is crucial, Alaska is one of only seven states that does not use Medicaid to fund GME, and no federal employers such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Health Resources and Services Administration, or the Department of Defense are seen offering GME jobs in Alaska.
Therefore, expanding GME in Alaska requires partnerships across systems of care and their respective funding sources. To this end, the University of Washington hosted the WWAMI GME Summit in Anchorage earlier this year to explore options, resulting in three clear recommendations for the state. First, Alaska should establish a GME Council to articulate the future vision and process for GME expansion in Alaska. Second, Alaska Medicaid should support GME and inform stakeholders and policy leaders of the importance of GME expansion in Alaska. Third, Alaska should establish a multidisciplinary GME teaching medical center.
We are enthusiastic and optimistic that Anchorage was the location of this regional GME summit because it signaled that GME should be, and is, a policy priority. We strongly believe that increasing GME in Alaska will increase the number of physicians practicing here and improve access, quality, and outcomes of care, a goal we all share.
Dr. Alexander von Hafften is a psychiatrist who first trained and worked in Alaska in 1990 as a WWAMI resident in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He returned to Alaska in 1993 and has been actively involved in undergraduate and graduate medical education ever since.
Lindsay Rodis is the spokesperson for Alaska WWAMI School of Medical Education and since January 2023 has been featuring stories of students, faculty and leaders across the state illustrating the impact of medical education at the local, state and regional levels.
Opinions expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a wide range of viewpoints. To submit an article for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Submissions of under 200 words may be sent to letters@adn.com or click here to submit from any web browser. Read our complete guidelines for letters and commentary here.
