Access to medical care is critical to improving Merced. Educating more doctors can help | Opinion
In 2021, UC Merced conducted a survey of faculty and staff residential decisions, asking: Where do you live and why? For those who chose to reside outside Merced, the top reason — surpassing all others combined, at 55% — was “access to medical care.”
This sentiment isn’t unique to university employees. Access to medical services is at the top of the list for many when deciding where to live, work and put down multigenerational roots. This is an issue the Merced County Times and Sun-Star have championed editorially for many years. Access to medical care is also one of the important variables businesses consider when determining where to relocate, and where they will remain.
Merced is an up-and-coming city, with 90,000 residents in a county of 286,000. As a trusted health care partner and a champion for advancing medical services in the Central Valley, Dignity Health-Mercy Medical Center is the region’s premiere medical provider. But like many rural-area hospitals, it faces the significant challenge of there not being enough physicians to meet the health-care needs of a growing population. Unfortunately, this results in some patients having to travel long distances for services.
Like Mercy Medical Center, many local institutions are exploring opportunities and finding solutions to meet those challenges. City Fire is adding ambulances for critical transportation needs to supplement the local private ambulance company. Merced College has for decades been a leader in educating nurses, radiologic technologists, paramedics and other vital health professionals.
UC Merced has taken a significant step forward by partnering with UC San Francisco and UCSF-Fresno to develop the BS-to-MD pathway to encourage the training of more Valley physicians. The university will break ground on a state-of-the-art medical education building this year, and the first cohort of Valley medical students will begin classes at UC Merced in Fall 2023.
The ultimate goal, of course, is to build out the program into a full-scale medical school in Merced. We know from years of academic research and practical observations that doctors are more likely to establish their practices in the place they were educated and did their residencies. To increase the likelihood of that occurring, the BS-to-MD path accepts only students from the San Joaquin Valley who know the region and its issues, and are committed to seeing their communities thrive. And through partnerships with local health-care facilities like Mercy Medical Center, Merced’s next generation of physicians will have an opportunity to pursue an undergraduate or graduate medical degree in the community they call home.
Thankfully, our elected leaders also care deeply about their constituents and are doing everything they can at the federal and state levels to address our region’s medical challenges. U.S. Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, has refiled his Expanding Medical Education Act to bolster the health care workforce and support medical schools in rural areas of the country, including the Valley — a bill supported by the Association of American Medical Colleges. “Growing our own doctors is the only way of confronting this shortage,” Costa says.
State Sen. Anna Caballero and Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria have championed efforts to expand health care. Indeed, their strong public stances and tireless efforts are helping to bring the hospital in neighboring Madera County back from closure. And because of their support, and that of former Assemblymember Adam Gray, our Gov. Gavin Newsom has put his personal endorsement and the full credit of the state of California behind the UC Merced medical education building.
Further, among our shared priorities must be the continued development of programs, services and amenities that help to keep vital professionals in our community. These include a robust and rigorous K-12 education system, post-secondary educational options, enhanced retail and restaurants, equity-minded affordable housing, and accentuation of the community pride, which has long been a hallmark of Merced and the San Joaquin Valley.
We face both a growing and an aging population here in Merced, as in much of the country, and we must work together continuously, creatively and untiringly to address the current and future needs and challenges faced by those living in our community.
We all want our families, friends and neighbors to be healthy and thriving, and having the resources to train and retain new physicians in Merced is a step towards a healthier future for us all.
Juan Sánchez Muñoz is chancellor of UC Merced. Dales Johns is the CEO of Mercy Medical Center .
