Young doctors, lured to rural areas by financial incentives, may not stay past their required time

Through the stimulus package and health-care reform the Obama administration invested more than $1 billion in the National Health Services Corps, which lures recent medical-school graduates to underserved areas with the pledge to pay off school loans. However, doctors completing their Corps obligations are struggling with the decision of whether to stay rural. While nearly 5,000 recent medical school graduates accepted Corps grants to pay off tuition and school loans averaging $150,000 per student, and the program hopes to attract 2,800 more graduates next year, experts say they expect retention to be a problem, Darryl Fears of The Washington Post reports.

One trying to decide is Sarah Carricaburu, one of two in her Northwestern University class "who chose to become a family practitioner," not a highly paid specialist, which "the school is known for producing," Fears writes. She told him, "When I told one of my professors that it was what I wanted to do, he said, 'You're too smart for that.' I just always felt that I really wanted to help people who wouldn't otherwise get help." (Post photo by Michael Williamson)

But now she says she doesn't know if she will stay past her three-year obligation at the Southern Albemarle Family Practice in Esmont, Va., where her office has just one computer with Internet access, and it's dial-up. "I grew up in the age of electronic medical records," she told Fears. "Coming here was like stepping back in time. I would like to stay in a community health-care setting, but here I didn't feel like I had the resources to do my job. You're cut off." Carricaburu said if the Corps wants to improve rural retention rates, making rural offices more friendly to technologically savvy young doctors will be key. Her decision won't just affect her personal career; she is not only the only full-time physician in Esmont (MapQuest image) but the only one in southern Albermarle County.

"Through the health-care overhaul, the Obama administration has worked to lighten their load with doctors such as Carricaburu, but nobody at the clinic is sure that the situation will work out," Fears writes. Carricaburu told Fears she admires her colleagues in Esmont, but she is simply not like them. "The other doctors are older. They learned stuff on the job," she said. "That's not how I was trained. I feel like I'm going backward." (Read more)