Forty-nine percent, or 94 of 193 LSU Health New Orleans graduating medical students participating in the National Resident Match Program this year, chose to remain in Louisiana to complete their medical training, and 78% of those staying in-state will enter an LSU Health residency program. The LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine residency programs in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles and Bogalusa will accept 208 new residents for 208 residency positions. The vast majority of physicians providing care to the citizens of Louisiana are LSU Health-trained doctors.
“Nearly half of our medical graduates have chosen to remain in Louisiana to continue their medical training with more of them entering primary care specialties, and all of our residency programs filled, providing a healthy supply of physicians for the state,” notes Dr. Larry Hollier, Chancellor of LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans. “Of concern is the anxiety our students feel over budget cuts, either proposed or imposed, to higher education and health care every year. This year, fewer of our graduates are staying than last year, and we are concerned that the health care needs of our state could be affected in the future.”
For nine consecutive years, mid-year budget cuts have occurred at the same time graduating medical students are making their rank order lists of residency programs for the Match.
The Match, conducted annually by the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), is the primary system that matches applicants to residency programs with available positions at U.S. teaching hospitals and academic health centers. The choices of the students are entered into a software program as are the choices of the institutions with residency programs. All U.S. graduating medical students found out at the same time today where they “matched” and where they will spend their years of residency training. National studies have found that a high number of physicians set up their permanent practices in the areas where they have completed their residency programs. Therefore, match results figure prominently in Louisiana’s physician work force.
“Our medical graduates are in high demand nationally,” said Dr. Steve Nelson, Dean of the School of Medicine at LSU Health New Orleans. “Most of them have the option to leave if they so choose. In the past when our students chose out-of-state residency programs, they left to broaden their experience and many would come home to practice. But if they leave because they’re worried about the future of health care and the quality of life in Louisiana, the chances are that they may not return. Louisiana is among the states with the highest number of physicians age 60 and older, and we are quite concerned that the constant budget uncertainty will make it increasingly difficult to retain our highly qualified graduates and an adequate supply of physicians.”
The percentage of LSU Health New Orleans medical graduates going into primary care is 51% this year. Primary Care specialties included are Family Practice, Internal Medicine, Medicine-Preliminary, Medicine-Primary, Obstetrics-Gynecology, Pediatrics, and Medicine-Pediatrics. OB-GYN is not always included in primary care data; however, in some Louisiana communities the only physician is an OB-GYN.
Of the 65 accredited residency and fellowship programs under LSU Health New Orleans, 34 participated in the Main NRMP Match whose results were released today. They are Anesthesiology, Child Neurology, Dermatology, Emergency Medicine (Baton Rouge and New Orleans), Family Practice (Kenner, Bogalusa, Lafayette and Lake Charles), Internal Medicine (Baton Rouge, Lafayette and New Orleans), Interventional Radiology, Medicine-Preliminary (Baton Rouge, Lafayette and New Orleans), Neurological Surgery, Neurology, Obstetrics-Gynecology (Baton Rouge and New Orleans), Orthopedic Surgery, Otolaryngology, Pathology, Pediatrics, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Plastic Surgery, Psychiatry (Baton Rouge and New Orleans), Radiology, General Surgery, Surgery-Preliminary, Vascular Surgery, Medicine-Pediatrics, Medicine-Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics-Emergency Medicine.
LSU Health New Orleans medical graduates training in other states will be going to such prestigious programs as Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, the University of Alabama-Birmingham, the Medical University of South Carolina, Emory University and Stanford, among others.
The National Residency Matching Program was established in 1952 to provide an orderly and fair mechanism to match the preferences of applicants for U.S. residency positions with residency program choices of applicants. The program provides a common time for the announcement of the appointments, as well as an agreement for programs and applicants to honor the commitment to offer and accept an appointment if a match results.
Residency programs begin on July 1, 2017.