Two family medicine residency programs in the Seattle-Tacoma area are folding or downsizing, raising concerns about physician shortages in already underserved areas.
Tacoma's Community Health Care is shuttering its family medicine residency, losing eight positions per year, and Providence Swedish is merging its Cherry Hill and First Hill family medicine residencies, cutting six positions per year in Seattle.
Each of those graduating physicians would have cared for about 1,800 patients per year, Becca Wolinsky, MD, a third-year family medicine resident in Seattle, wrote in an op-ed in the Seattle Times.
"When our region loses 14 family physician trainees annually, 25,000 patients will be left without a doctor per year," Wolinsky wrote. "Imagine even longer wait times for routine care and the trickle-down impacts on already-overwhelmed ERs and specialty services."
Russ Sondker, a spokesperson for Tacoma Community Health Care, said the organization is trying to save the family medicine residency program by getting neighboring health system MultiCare to take it on, but at this point it's a "Hail Mary."
