(Aug. 25, 2016) A citizen request passed along by Town Councilman Mike Pruitt for a medical doctor’s practice in Snow Hill has been heard by both Atlantic General Hospital and Peninsula Regional Medical Center, but won’t be fulfilled anytime soon.
Both health systems have their reasons, with PRMC pointing to a nationwide shortage of primary care physicians and AGH referring to previous failed attempts to maintain a practice here, as well as a promise to pursue technological avenues that may offer these services in the future.
The town’s medical needs are served locally by Michael Crum, a certified registered nurse practitioner at Peninsula Regional Primary Care on Market Street and part of the PRMC network.
Crum joined the practice and PRMC in April. According to the announcement of his arrival, Crum spent the previous decade at “a local internal medicine and geriatrics practice as a primary care provider, tending to a wide variety of healthcare needs.”
Pruitt himself said he has seen Crum, and has no problem with the current arrangement, but he felt he needed to be responsive to concerns directed at him.
At his request, the town sent a letter dated July 16 to the hospitals.
“The bottom line is, if we could get a primary care physician to put there we would do it in a New York minute,” Dr. Thomas DeMarco, vice president of Peninsula Regional Medical Group, said. “There is a tremendous shortage — we’re at a shortfall now and the Association of American Medical Colleges projects by 2025 there will be a deficit of between 12,500 and 31,000 primary care physicians.”
DeMarco said it takes about 10 years to earn primary care physician status, which is the reason for the long projection, and highlights the need to act quickly.
“If we, right now, snapped our fingers and got 20,000 new applicants to medical schools we wouldn’t see the benefit for 10 years,” he said.
And medical school costs money.
“Primary care physicians are paid the least in three states: Maine, Nevada and Maryland. The average physician has $150,000 worth of loans, and for specialists, it’s higher,” DeMarco said.
PRMC is currently short about 25 primary care physicians, DeMarco said.
“We’re doing the absolute best we can. We just don’t have one. The moment I find one, I’ll send them to Snow Hill,” he said.
In Worcester, Atlantic General Hospital’s concerns are more functional than structural.
“When we relocated Dr. Gong to our Ocean Pines office, we employed a nurse practitioner for Snow Hill, who we placed in the offices with the Worcester County Health Department in Snow Hill. We had appointment times and walk in services. On average, she was seeing three to six patients per week,” Sarah Yonker, director of marketing at AGH, said in a prepared statement. “This is not sustainable, and practitioners — physicians or nurse practitioners — will not stay in a practice that does not meet their professional needs.”
There is also the matter of similar services being offered nearby.
“In evaluating our primary care provider distribution, we looked at travel time for patients to our practice locations throughout the region. Our Pocomoke City primary care practice, which includes laboratory testing and x-ray testing, is less than a 15-minute drive from Snow Hill.
“Our Berlin practices, including Dr. Gong’s practice, are about 20 minutes away. The Berlin offices also include the specialty practices for the region. When evaluated against most rural communities — in fact, when compared to many metropolitan communities — these travel times very reasonable,” Yonker said.
Both health systems have their reasons, with PRMC pointing to a nationwide shortage of primary care physicians and AGH referring to previous failed attempts to maintain a practice here, as well as a promise to pursue technological avenues that may offer these services in the future.
The town’s medical needs are served locally by Michael Crum, a certified registered nurse practitioner at Peninsula Regional Primary Care on Market Street and part of the PRMC network.
Crum joined the practice and PRMC in April. According to the announcement of his arrival, Crum spent the previous decade at “a local internal medicine and geriatrics practice as a primary care provider, tending to a wide variety of healthcare needs.”
Pruitt himself said he has seen Crum, and has no problem with the current arrangement, but he felt he needed to be responsive to concerns directed at him.
At his request, the town sent a letter dated July 16 to the hospitals.
“The bottom line is, if we could get a primary care physician to put there we would do it in a New York minute,” Dr. Thomas DeMarco, vice president of Peninsula Regional Medical Group, said. “There is a tremendous shortage — we’re at a shortfall now and the Association of American Medical Colleges projects by 2025 there will be a deficit of between 12,500 and 31,000 primary care physicians.”
DeMarco said it takes about 10 years to earn primary care physician status, which is the reason for the long projection, and highlights the need to act quickly.
“If we, right now, snapped our fingers and got 20,000 new applicants to medical schools we wouldn’t see the benefit for 10 years,” he said.
And medical school costs money.
“Primary care physicians are paid the least in three states: Maine, Nevada and Maryland. The average physician has $150,000 worth of loans, and for specialists, it’s higher,” DeMarco said.
PRMC is currently short about 25 primary care physicians, DeMarco said.
“We’re doing the absolute best we can. We just don’t have one. The moment I find one, I’ll send them to Snow Hill,” he said.
In Worcester, Atlantic General Hospital’s concerns are more functional than structural.
“When we relocated Dr. Gong to our Ocean Pines office, we employed a nurse practitioner for Snow Hill, who we placed in the offices with the Worcester County Health Department in Snow Hill. We had appointment times and walk in services. On average, she was seeing three to six patients per week,” Sarah Yonker, director of marketing at AGH, said in a prepared statement. “This is not sustainable, and practitioners — physicians or nurse practitioners — will not stay in a practice that does not meet their professional needs.”
There is also the matter of similar services being offered nearby.
“In evaluating our primary care provider distribution, we looked at travel time for patients to our practice locations throughout the region. Our Pocomoke City primary care practice, which includes laboratory testing and x-ray testing, is less than a 15-minute drive from Snow Hill.
“Our Berlin practices, including Dr. Gong’s practice, are about 20 minutes away. The Berlin offices also include the specialty practices for the region. When evaluated against most rural communities — in fact, when compared to many metropolitan communities — these travel times very reasonable,” Yonker said.