Years ago, Dr. Lee Valentine, D.O., and other area family physicians saw a looming crisis. Area doctors were aging and nearing retirement but Meridian didn’t have a program to bring residents into the area to replace the retirees. 

In response, Valentine, and others, began the EC-HealthNet Family Medicine Residency program to lure residents into the rural communities of East Mississippi and West Alabama and train them on the challenges of rural healthcare.

“If we don’t do something, we’re going to have a huge vacuum in Primary Care,” Valentine, the program director, said. “It was really born out of conversations over the last 5 to 10 years about how we have no training programs in East Mississippi.”

This June, the first class of residents will graduate from the program and at least two of the four will be staying in the Meridian area. One has accepted an Emergency Department fellowship and another has signed a contract with Rush Health Systems. The last two third-year students remain undecided. 

“We really have an excellent medical community,” Valentine, a primary care doctor for 35 years, said. “So my question was, ‘Why don’t we have a training program?’ “

One of the undecided graduates, Jonathan Fuller, grew up in the Delta region and graduated in the first class of the William Carey University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine.

“I guess I’m a sucker for punishment,” Fuller, 34, said about his groundbreaking schooling and training. Before attending William Carey he had worked for a few years with a hospital in Alabama, using his University of Mississippi business degree. 

“(This is) a lot more fun than what I was doing,” Fuller said. “It’s fun to care for people and better than doing paperwork all day. But the funny thing is I can’t seem to get away from the paperwork.”

Fuller followed the program from its temporary clinic to its new permanent clinic on Highway 19 South, near the Walmart, and helped start an in-patient program to follow patients as they receive healthcare.

At the clinic, Valentine said, patients are seen by residents and by a presiding physician, allowing patients to feel more comfortable sharing their healthcare problems because they spend more time in the presence of medical help.

This ties into the program’s focus on providing care in rural communities and giving hands-on training, all aspects that students say drew them to the program. 

“There’s a great need for rural physicians in the state,” Matthew Capalbo, a second-year resident, said. “You can tell they (at the program) care about providing a great education for us. There’s a lot more one-on-one and a lot more responsibility.”

Capalbo, 31, said not being stuck in traffic, being able to enjoy the outdoors and friendly people were all major draws to a rural residency program. 

“You get to know the people in the community and the patients much better,” Capalbo, from Ocean Springs, said.

The program currently has 18 positions, or six post-graduate year positions at each level. Once the four first-year residents graduate in June, six more will join the program the following month. 

Lindsey McCormick, from Lansing, Mich., has lived in Mississippi for more than five years and has almost finished her first year of the program. 

“I like it,” McCormick, 33, said. “I still get a kick out of the Southern sayings… and I don’t miss the snow.”

The intimacy of the program was a major attraction for McCormick, in contrast to big university programs with lots of competition.

“(Elsewhere) there are these huge groups of people all trying to do one thing,” McCormick said. “With only one or two who actually get to do it… It’s really a big difference than being in a university setting. It’s a big change but I think it’s a good change.”

Some of the major challenges that face residents in the program: dealing with a lack of access and poverty.

“You have to learn to work in the framework of where the patients are,” Valentine said. “They have to learn to be proactive.”

The program is seeking an additional accreditation process and continuing to attract students from medical schools in Alabama, Mississippi and even Kentucky.

“The only thing constant about our program is change. Every day we’re striving to improve,” Valentine said. “We want to be known as the program where if you want to practice rural medicine and learn the skills that come with that we’re the place to come to.”