Medping today history.
Havana, Florida – For a rural community, this city of 1,750 people was more likely than most. A family doctor has practiced here for the past 30 years.
But it ended in December when Mark Newberry, MD, retired. To attract a new doctor, the leaders of Havana have made announcements in local newspapers, published opinions on social networks and softened the pot with a medical office without rent equipped with an x -ray, an ultrasonic machine and a bone density scanner – all belonging to the city.
Local leaders hope that the recruitment campaign will help attract candidates in the middle of a national shortage of doctors.
“This is important for our community,” said Kendrah Wilkerson, municipal director of Havana, “in the same way that the parks are important and good future planning is important.”
According to a report by Florida Department of Health, the shortages of doctors affect all or part of almost all the counties, but the less populated counties, like Gadsden, where Havana is located, have the least doctors for 10,000 residents.
The shortage of Florida doctors should grow during the next decade, with a study projecting a state -scale need for 18,000 doctors – including 6,000 primary care physicians – by 2035.
“This is a huge huge problem,” said Matthew Smeltzer, managing partner of Capstone recruitment advisers, a company that helps hospitals, medical practices and other employers to find and hire doctors. “It probably strikes the very hard cities, just because most people would prefer to live in an intermediate community or a large community.”
In this difficult environment, the leaders of Havana hope that the announcements and the advantages without rent will bring out their small town and persuade a doctor to practice here.
Wilkerson describes the community, just south of the Georgia border, as an ideal place to raise a family. Its country roads are lined with farms, pastures and churches. The city center of rue Main includes antiques stores, gift shops, a general store and restaurants.
“Everything you imagine a Hallmark film is a bit where we live,” said Wilkerson. “These are people who care and always care about each other, and the neighbors are really friends.”
Offering generous incentives was how city leaders practiced Newbert in Havana in 1993.
Newberry, which served around 2,000 patients, refused to be interviewed. “I just retire!” He said in an email, adding that “the city has chosen unconventional means” to recruit a doctor.
By subsidizing the office space and the use of medical equipment to attract a doctor, Havana takes care of the needs of its residents, said Wilkerson.
Without a doctor in the city, some of the former Newberry patients must now go to Tallahassee, about a 30-minute drive in the southeast of Havana. Others see doctors in Quincy, about a 20 -minute drive to the west.
“We hope they come back when we find a new doctor,” said the mayor of Havana, Eddie Bass.
Susan Freiden, a former municipal director who retired in 2006, said that having a local doctor is also important to meet the needs of low -income residents in the city, many of whom are elderly. “Not everyone can go to Tallahassee to get a doctor,” she said. “Not everyone has transport.”
But it remains to be seen if the space and office equipment without rent are sufficient to attract a doctor in Havana. The city’s recruitment campaign has aroused a lot of interest from nurses, but few primary care physicians applied for this position.
City leaders say they are hopeful of finding a family doctor, who can practice and prescribe drugs independently.
“We would really prefer, you know, having a real doctor who can manage everything for us,” said Bass.
Smeltzer, the doctor’s doctor, said primary care physicians are particularly low. And although, according to its experience, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas are among the places that doctors want to live and work, it often takes something more to persuade them to work in a small town, he said.
“If someone wants to train in a small town, he is more likely to go where he has links, whether he is himself or his spouse or another significant,” he said.
The challenge for a community of the size of Havana, said Smeltzer, is that “there can be no one in this city who went to the medical school. Or, if there is, maybe it is one. But was it a primary care doctor?”
However, there is a silver lining. Smeltzer said that young doctors give great value to work -life equilibrium and significant relationships with their patients – qualities that can give an advantage to a small independent town.
“We hear much more about the quality of life and the work of work life in the last 3 to 5 years that we have never heard before,” he said, “and it is almost in locking with compensation in terms of what they are focusing on.”
Freiden, the former director of the city of Havana, said that it is the same values that Newberry had when he started to train here. She has even become one of her patients.
“It was simply perfect,” she said, “because he was not all about money, if you can imagine it. He was a kind of different doctor.”
Fortunately for Havana, the city recently received the interest from a family medicine doctor who grew up here, went to the medical school and plans to finish a 3 -year residence in Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare in June.
Camron Browning, MD, graduated in 2003 of Northside Havana High School, told the municipal council of seven members in an interview of December that he concentrated on family medicine and that, during his residence, he saw thousands of patients, delivered babies and acquired experience as the Hospitalist.
“My goal,” he said, “was to be able to get home and serve my hometown.”
Smeltzer said that Havana’s incentives could be attractive to new doctors, such as Browning, who would face intimidating start -up costs to establish an independent practice.
After the interview in December, the council voted unanimously to start contractual negotiations with Browning, who said he was planning to be ready to see patients as soon as possible after completing his residence.
“I’m here to stay,” Browning told council. “It was always my dream.”
Kff Health News is a national editorial hall that produces in -depth journalism on health problems and is one of the main KFF operating programs – an independent source of independent research, survey and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
