HAVANA, Fla. — For a rural neighborhood, this city of 1,750 individuals has been extra lucky than most. A household physician has practiced right here for the final 30 years.
However that resulted in December when Mark Newberry retired. To draw a brand new physician, Havana leaders took out need advertisements in native newspapers, posted notices on social media, and sweetened the pot with a rent-free medical workplace geared up with an X-ray, an ultrasound machine, and a bone density scanner — all owned by the city.
Native leaders hope the recruitment marketing campaign will assist entice candidates amid a nationwide scarcity of docs.
“This is important for our community,” stated Kendrah Wilkerson, Havana’s city supervisor, “in the same way that parks are important and good future planning is important.”
In response to a Florida Division of Well being report, physician shortages have an effect on all or half of practically each county, however much less populous counties, resembling Gadsden, the place Havana is positioned, have the fewest physicians per 10,000 residents.
Florida’s physician scarcity is predicted to develop within the subsequent decade, with one research projecting a statewide want of 18,000 physicians — together with 6,000 major care docs — by 2035.
“This is a huge, huge issue,” stated Matthew Smeltzer, a managing companion of Capstone Recruiting Advisors, an organization that helps hospitals, doctor practices, and different employers discover and rent docs. “It probably hits small towns the hardest, just because most people would prefer to live in a midsize or large community.”
On this difficult surroundings, Havana leaders are hoping that need advertisements and rent-free perks will make their small city stand out and persuade a physician to apply right here.
Wilkerson describes the neighborhood, simply south of the Georgia border, as a super place to boost a household. Its nation roads are lined with farms, pastures, and church buildings. Principal Avenue downtown options vintage shops, present outlets, a common retailer, and eating places.
“Everything you would imagine a Hallmark movie to be is kind of where we live,” Wilkerson stated. “It’s people who still care and look out for each other, and neighbors are actually friends.”
Providing beneficiant incentives was how city leaders obtained Newberry to apply in Havana in 1993. The city gave Newberry an preliminary deal just like the one it’s providing now, and later started offering him about $15,000 a yr in monetary assist.
Newberry, who served about 2,000 sufferers, declined to be interviewed. “I’m just retiring!” he stated in an electronic mail, including that “the town has chosen unconventional ways” of recruiting a physician.
By subsidizing workplace area and the usage of medical tools to draw a physician, Havana is looking for the wants of its residents, Wilkerson stated.
With out a city physician, a few of Newberry’s former sufferers now should journey to Tallahassee, a couple of 30-minute drive southeast of Havana. Others are seeing docs in Quincy, a couple of 20-minute drive west.
“Our hope is that they’ll come back when we find us a new doctor,” Havana Mayor Eddie Bass stated.
Susan Freiden, a former city supervisor who retired in 2006, stated having a neighborhood physician can also be necessary to satisfy the wants of the city’s low-income residents, lots of whom are older adults. “Not everybody can get to Tallahassee to get a doctor,” she stated. “Not everybody has transportation.”
But it surely stays to be seen whether or not rent-free workplace area and tools are sufficient to draw a physician to Havana. The city’s recruitment marketing campaign has drawn loads of curiosity from nurse practitioners, however few major care physicians have utilized for the place.
City leaders say they’re holding out hope of discovering a household doctor, who can apply and prescribe medicines independently.
“We would really, you know, prefer to have a true doctor that can handle it all for us,” Bass stated.
Smeltzer, the doctor headhunter, stated major care physicians are in particularly low provide. And although in his expertise Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas are among the many locations docs need to stay and work, it usually takes one thing additional to steer them to work in a small city, he stated.
“If someone wants to practice in a small town, they’re more likely to go to where they have ties, whether it’s themselves or their spouse or significant other,” he stated.
The problem for a neighborhood of Havana’s measurement, Smeltzer stated, is that “there may literally be nobody from that town that went to med school. Or, if there is, maybe it’s one. But were they a primary care physician?”
Nonetheless, there’s a silver lining. Smeltzer stated younger physicians are putting a excessive worth on work-life steadiness and significant relationships with their sufferers — qualities that will give an edge to a small-town, impartial apply.
“We hear quality of life and work-life balance far more in the last three to five years than we ever heard before,” he stated, “and that’s almost in lockstep with compensation in terms of what they’re focusing on.”
Freiden, the previous Havana city supervisor, stated these are the identical values Newberry had when he began to apply right here. She even grew to become one in all his sufferers.
“He was just perfect,” she stated, “because he wasn’t all about the money, if you can imagine that. He was kind of a different kind of physician.”
Fortuitously for Havana, the city not too long ago acquired curiosity from a household drugs physician who grew up right here, went to medical faculty, and expects to complete a three-year residency at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare in June.
Camron Browning, a 2003 graduate of Northside Havana Excessive Faculty, advised the seven-member City Council in a December interview that he was specializing in household drugs and that, throughout his residency, he has seen 1000’s of sufferers, delivered infants, and gained expertise as a hospitalist.
“My goal,” he stated, “was to be able to come home and serve my hometown.”
Smeltzer stated Havana’s incentives could possibly be engaging to new docs, resembling Browning, who would face daunting startup prices to determine an impartial apply.
After the December interview, the Council voted unanimously to start contract negotiations with Browning, who stated he would plan to be able to see sufferers as quickly as doable after finishing his residency.
“I’m here to stay,” Browning advised the Council. “This was always my dream.”
