Rural health care in Utah has two urgent problems. There aren’t enough workers, and it’s a challenge to train, hire and retain more workers for the future.
Lawmakers discussed both issues when the interim Health and Human Services Committee met in St. George on Sept. 18. Toward the end of her presentation to the committee, Rocky Vista University Dean of Osteopathic Medicine Heather Ferrill pointed to two maps that illustrate the challenge.
The first showed that a vast majority of Utah counties have too few primary care doctors to meet their local needs. The second showed where graduates from the university’s med school — located in Ivins just west of St. George — are doing their residency training this year.
She directed the legislators’ attention to the clusters of graduates who ended up going to hospitals in Nevada, Arizona and Idaho.
“Most of those students wanted to stay in Utah,” Ferrill said. “And they couldn’t, so they had to go out of state.”
Read the full story at kuer.org.
This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aim to inform readers across the state.