Governor Healey approves $10M pilot program for UMass Chan Medical School

Governor Maura Healey signs off on a pilot program providing UMass Chan Medical School with $10 million.

“This has been a problem in our healthcare system across the country for several decades now, I would say,” Dr. Anne Larkin, a surgeon and professor at UMass Chan Medical School, told Boston 25 news.

Dr. Larkin says that because of the shortage, family medicine is taking a hard hit.

When you think about it though, family medicine is the quintessential primary care doctor. They provide care in the prenatal setting, then through the pediatric care, then adult care, women’s health. It’s a ‘soup to nuts’ care."

Governor Maura Healey has just signed off on a new legislation set to provide the medical school with $10 million.

The scholarship fund is specifically for students who enter family medicine residencies following graduation.

“I want to foster and grow these relationships with my patients and family medicine is the specialty that’s going to allow me to do that,” Joseph Distefano Mendoza, said.

Distefano Mendoza is a fourth-year medical student and feels a program like this can create an incentive to go into primary care, especially because he says it’s a specialty that is known not to pay as much as others.

He also says it could ease the burden so many feel throughout their journey to practice medicine.

“Having one’s debt like weighing on your mind can be an additionally thing adding to the challenge, adds to the toll that is the medical education process and so I think a program like this that can alleviate some of that debt is important,” he said.

Physicians receiving the scholarship must commit to at least five years of service in underserved practices and hospitals defined by the bill.

“That’s another bonus as a result of all this, we are going to be putting ppl in places with the population that is in the most need and then they end up staying, statistically!” Dr. Larkin explained.

“What t we can do, is demonstrate is that this is really something good, the commonwealth has a reputation of developing programs that are first in class, so to speak, models for all kinds of other states to follow. we want to be that same sort of model for medical schools in other states that can do similar work,” she added.

The first of it’s kind pilot program offering promise and potentially saving the future of primary care.

“...without our primary care foundation than we will never be able to do the best we can for the patients in our country so if you want to do real good work for patients this is the way you can do it,” she said.

The goal is to start offering the scholarship in this next academic year.

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