After four years of medical school and at least three years of a medical residency, young doctors are eager to start their journey into practicing medicine, something many have trained for most of their lives.

As baby boomer doctors with practices in quiet, rural areas continue to retire, the newest generations of doctors arent replacing them. This is especially evident in Eastern North Carolina, as Hyde and Tyrrell counties have no physicians.

The number of rural doctors continues to drop, and health problems of rural America steadily increase and become more severe.

North Carolina has always been a medically-underserved area, something Dr. Paul Cunningham, dean of the Brody School of Medicine at ECU, said he has seen plaguing the East since first coming to the region in 1981.

What we are seeing is that and this is typical across the country there are specialties in short supply, Cunningham said. Its more acute in rural and remote areas than it is in built-up areas. Greenville, for example, has an adequate supply of all specialties and physicians, with few exceptions. But the region around it is having desperate needs for surgeons, more obstetricians and gynecologists and, of course, primary care doctors.

Primary care doctors i.e. family physicians, internal medicine physicians and pediatricians are supposed to be a leading force in prevention and early detection. But Eastern North Carolina has a long way to go before it has a sufficient number of doctors to fight the health problems facing rural areas, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Jim Dobbins, vice president of human resources at Lenoir Memorial Hospital, is in charge of recruiting physicians to the area and reported 24 of the 85 physicians in the county are primary care doctors. A recent study showed that the number needs to double to 48 for sufficient coverage.

Medicaid expansion

Original post:
ENC facing primary physician shortfall, bracing itself for Medicaid expansion