Alaska, last in medical residency slots, plans $6.4 million for doctor training

Editor’s note: This story was updated Oct. 22 to add the total of the state’s planned residency awards, national data on residency training slots and details on each funded project.

Alaska plans to put about $6.4 million in federal rural health money into training doctors, in a state its health department says ranks last in the country for medical residency slots.

Residency is the hospital-based training doctors complete after medical school. Alaska ranks 50th of 50 states in those graduate medical education slots, according to a Department of Health recap of a March workforce session. The Association of American Medical Colleges counted 5.1 residents and fellows per 100,000 Alaskans in 2020, among the fewest of any state.

The recap lists heavy reliance on out-of-state recruitment, high turnover and limited rural training and residency opportunities among the state's workforce challenges. Training Alaskans locally increases long-term retention, it says, and participants named keeping rural providers as their top priority.

The money comes from Alaska's roughly $272 million first-year share of the federal Rural Health Transformation Program. Five residency projects are on the state's list of planned awards.

The largest, about $4.6 million, would go to Providence Health & Services-Washington to stabilize and enhance the Alaska Family Medicine Residency Program, including recruitment, rural training and faculty development.

Sunshine Community Health Center would get $792,431 to develop a family medicine residency in the Mat-Su, which it calls the Denali Family Medicine Residency Program. The University of Alaska Anchorage would get $487,022 to set up an Alaska Graduate Medical Education Council to coordinate residency training and help health organizations develop training programs.

The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium would get $296,017 for an emergency medicine residency elective and faculty exchange with the University of Washington. Its application says emergency departments in rural Alaska are often staffed by physicians without residency training in emergency medicine. Seattle Children's Alaska Track Pediatric Residency would get $279,270 for faculty development and training capacity.

Four of the five were part of the nearly $126 million round the state announced Aug. 21, Alaska News reported.

Training the program pays for comes with a service commitment, the recap says. First-year money must be spent by Sept. 30, 2027, according to the department, and projects seeking a second year have to wait for the spring funding round, Health Commissioner Heidi Hedberg said this month, Alaska News reported.