During Tuesday’s Columbus Rotary Club meeting, Wahnee Sherman, executive director of the Mississippi Rural Physicians Scholarship program, noted that since its inception in 2007, the program has produced 100 physicians who have agreed to work in rural areas. MRPS provides a $35,000 per year scholarship to each medical school student in the program. Those students are placed in residencies in rural hospitals — classified as having less than 10,000 people in their service area. After they graduate, they must agree to spend four years working at a rural hospital or clinic in Mississippi.
Of the 100 participants, 70 physicians are still in practice in rural areas. This year, the program has 61 students in residencies and 85 students in medical school.
The state has spent $2 million on the program to date and the numbers prove the program works.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that the need for physicians in rural areas of our state far exceeds what the MRPS, at its current level of funding, can provide.
Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its annual infant mortality rate, and the news is discouraging. Mississippi’s infant mortality rate surged from 8.1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2022’s release to 9.4 in the 2023 release—a 16% spike. The national rate remained constant at 5.4%. Mississippi’s infant mortality rate is higher than that of Libya, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, among others.
It’s likely that access to care, especially in rural areas, is the leading driver of these grim statistics. According to a March of Dimes study more than half of Mississippi’s 82 counties are considered “maternity care deserts,” defined as a county that has no hospitals providing obstetric care, no birth centers, no OB/GYN and no certified nurse midwives.
Noxubee County is a maternity care desert. So is Winston County.
Infant mortality is just one area of health care. Our state struggles in many other areas of health care, and it may get worse.
In addition to OB/GYNs, the MRPS channels scholars into family medicine, pediatrics, medical pediatrics and general internal medicine.
A report by the Center for Healthcare Quality of Payment Reform, shows 33 of the state’s rural hospitals (45%) are at risk of closing and 24 (32%) are at immediate risk of closing.
Put it together and a portrait of a state whose health care system is teetering on the brink of failure emerges. Meanwhile, our state legislature is sitting on a $3.9 billion budget surplus.
Expanding programs such as MRPS is certainly a good use of those funds. Given the reality of the situation, $2 million is merely a drop in the bucket.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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