St. Francis-Emory Healthcare becomes academic medical center with new residency program

St. Francis-Emory Healthcare plans to put a dent in the nationwide physician shortage by becoming an academic medical center with its first residency program, announced Friday.

The accredited, three-year internal medicine residency is a community-based program that will focus on teaching evidence-based medicine, according to a news release.

There are 15 residents in the program, set to begin in July with five second-year residents and 10 first-year residents, said St. Francis-Emory spokesperson Grant Farrimond. After a year, they expect to have 30 residents and their families moving in to the area, CEO Melody Trimble told the Ledger-Enquirer.

Residents will utilize resources from the Mercer University School of Medicine, which recently opened a campus in Columbus.

One of the residents in the program, Dr. George Jarrell, is from Columbus and has returned to be a part of this new program.

When Trimble spoke to Jarrell before the announcement, he told her, “Melody, I went to Brookstone. I went to (medical) school, and I’m coming home.”

After attending the Medical College of Georgia, coming back to Columbus for his residency is exciting and a great opportunity, Jarrell told the Ledger-Enquirer. The program is attractive to students because it is new, he said, so he and his peers can set the standard for how the program goes and will have a collaborative experience with the faculty.

Addressing the physician shortage

There is a national shortage of family physicians, St. Francis-Emory Chief Medical Officer Jagdeep Singh said, and the shortage is worse in Georgia. According to a 2021 report by the Association of American Medical Colleges, the United States could be short an estimated 37,800 to 124,000 physicians by 2034.

“The hope is that many who are educated and trained here will stay in this community,” Singh said.

The idea for the residency program began in 2018. It didn’t come to fruition until Trimble arrived in 2020, when she learned there was a vision for the hospital to become an academic medical center.

“We are a part of ensuring you have those resources you need, those physicians that you need to care for you as you age,” she said. “And we’re helping bring those to Columbus in the city, as well as the state.”

Becoming an academic medical center was a dream that took a lot of people to make happen, Reverend Jimmy Elder, chairman of the St. Francis-Emory Healthcare Board of Directors said.

“It’s going to strengthen the medical force here in Columbus,” Elder said. “There are statistics that show when students do the residency program in a particular hospital in a particular community, they’re more likely to come back to the community or at least stay in that state.”

Wisconsin native Dr. Jessica Withey is another resident joining the Columbus program. She was attracted to the program because it was community-based, she said.

“I just felt like on interview day, everyone had your back,” Withey said. “It’s a brand new program, so there’s room for tons of new possibilities and new experiences. And the diversity in the location was a perfect fit for me.”

Although Withey is not from Columbus, she does have family that lives here. She visited the area a couple years ago, escaping a Wisconsin winter and loved the southern city. Although Columbus is much larger than the town of 2,000 she grew up in, it “has that small community type of feel and is very welcoming.”

Withey plans to specialize in hematology oncology, and she looks forward to taking advantage of the resources and mentors the St. Francis-Emory program offers, she said.

“We learn when we teach,” Elder said. “So, I think you’ll find, even with the physicians here who will tell you, that they will be stronger doctors and will be more fulfilled because they are helping someone else learn along the way.”