This article was included in the “Your Community, Your Self” Community Benefits Report for Spring 2012. View the complete index of articles and content, or download the full PDF (four pages).
Each year Self Regional’s Family Practice Residency Program graduates highly trained family medicine physicians. About 20 percent of the graduates choose to practice in the Lakelands, as was the case with this, the MCFM Class of 2009. Dr. Houston Davis (back, left) and Dr. James Belcher (back, right) are practicing family medicine in Greenwood and Laurens, respectively.
Having a personal physician is one of the most important things you can do to maintain your health.
That personal physician serves as your first contact when you are not feeling well. Yet many of the communities within the Lakelands have faced the challenge of not having enough physicians.
Since 1994, Self Regional has provided funding for recruitment incentives to attract approximately 200 physicians who decided a smaller community was the right choice for their family. As a not-for-profit hospital, Self Regional is allowed to provide this assistance to attract physicians where there is a documented shortage.
Nearly all of these recruited physicians are able to join existing private practices or begin a new practice of their own. A few move to Greenwood as an employee of Self Regional Healthcare or Self Medical Group, the hospital’s not-for-profit physician affiliate.
As a teaching facility, Self Regional’s Family Practice Residency Program has established a reputation among medical students as a preferred location in the country for training in family medicine.
This is another source of family physicians to fill the shortage in our communities as an average of 20% of graduates – a total of just more than 70 to date – stay and make their home in the Lakelands.