Doctors committed to staying in Rockford

Next Rockford, a local young professionals organization, recently hosted its third welcome reception for students at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford. College dean Martin Lipsky, who has been with the school for nearly five years, wants to keep students in the community after graduation and bring them back once they’ve left. Lipsky sat down with the Register Star to talk about the doctor shortage and why Rockford is an appealing community for medical professionals.

How many medical school graduates typically stay in the community? We usually graduate about 50 people a year. Once they graduate from medical school, the students will go through a residency program. One or two of our students will stay here for that graduate training, and then our students will go elsewhere after they train. Some of them will come back. For instance, SwedishAmerican Hospital just recruited a family physician doctor. I would say we have about 85 of our graduates practicing in this area.

What we’ve done is try to lay the groundwork for people who want to come back to Rockford. The way we think we can do that is to have the best experience for our students and then try to get them more involved in the community. When our students come here, we try to have them meet other young people in the community, people who are enthused about Rockford. This is a good place to practice.

Did you reach out to Next Rockford or did they reach out to you? It was mutual. They were talking about how they wanted to get more involved, and I said that would be a good thing. They’re so committed to making Rockford a better place, and recruiting talented physicians to the community is an important part of that.

I try to work with kids that have aspirations to be physicians in the community. I talk to them about what it takes to be a doctor, the good and bad. I think it’s still a really good deal for the right person. It’s so much work that if you don’t have the passion or an interest in it, it may not be the best challenge for you. I’m very happy with my career in medicine, and I just try to share that with other people.

Does Rockford have enough doctors? There is a major need for doctors. I think all of the health systems are recruiting for physicians. In general, there is a lot of competition now for physicians. I’ve lived through having too many physicians to having too few, and I think we’re back to the feeling that we’re facing a physician shortage. Rockford has been a harder city to recruit to than I would have anticipated. I don’t fully understand it because I think it’s a great city ... to live in. I think the medical community here is good. There are three good hospitals, good support services with specialty care, and we’re close to Madison, Wis., and Chicago, areas that produce good doctors as well.

Is being too close to those cities an issue? I think it’s hard to get people here. Once we get people here, we do a better job because I think they really see the community. I can tell you I didn’t know much about Rockford until I came here (from Chicago). I thought it was a good professional opportunity for me. This is a very livable community. I thought housing was reasonable, I thought there was plenty to do here, and we’re close to a lot of weekend activities if people feel they need to get away.

What are some of the other initiatives to get students interested in the college? We’ve had some key people retire, so we’ve recruited some younger junior faculty who are very promising. We’ve expanded our community services to a large degree. We work with the jail, we do more school-based clinics, we’re working with more community agencies such as Easter Seals and the Carrie Lynn Center. We’ve added a new degree — a masters in biotechnology. And we’re getting ready to open the new College of Pharmacy, which should have its first students in 2010.

We’re also working to expand the number of slots we have for medical students. We get more than 7,000 applications for our 300 medical school spots. These kids are very smart, very competitive. Medicare supports graduate medical education, but they’ve put a cap on the number of training spots. It’s a good opportunity for kids who want to go to medical school, but they’re actually going to have to increase the number of residency training programs.

Our state support keeps going down, so we’ve certainly looked at ways that we can float in our own bottom. With the College of Pharmacy, we think it makes sense educationally, but it’s also an opportunity to utilize our resources to a greater degree in sharing physical resources, informational technology, as well as faculty. It makes economic sense.

What is the overall status of the physician shortage? First of all, we have more patients than we used to. The second thing is that the population is graying. So particularly with the baby boomers, we consume more resources and have more chronic diseases. The third is that physicians aren’t working as long as they used to. It used to be that they died with their boots on, as they used to say. Now physicians are retiring earlier, sometimes (moving on to) second careers. It’s not only a shortage but a distribution issue. If you go to the North Shore of Chicago, there are plenty of physicians. But if you go to the inner city of Chicago or small rural communities, there aren’t enough.

Another interesting phenomenon is that now our classes are about half women. I think they add so much to medicine, and I’m happy there’s a more balanced gender distribution. However, women are more likely to take time out of the work force for child rearing, they’re more likely to work part time, and statistically, they see fewer patients than men. So that’s an issue we have to grapple with, too. I think it’s a good thing, but we need more people in general.

One of the hard things for physicians is to balance personal and professional life. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that people are cutting down on their hours. The average physician works about 50 to 55 hours a week. The days where physicians were working 65 to 75 hours a week are over. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.

Reach staff writer Melissa Westphal at 815-987-1341 or mwestpha@rrstar.com.