FU RTH ERI N G CARE O N TH E CENTRAL COAST Residency Programs serve as a pipeline to retain physicians locally
At Marian Regional Medical Center, a pioneering spirit of innovation permeates the halls and rooms of every building. Stemming back to 1940, the Sisters of St. Francis saw a need to establish the Santa Maria Valley’s first hospital, and this legacy of healing lives on today through Marian's residency programs. This forward-thinking attitude led to the establishment of a Family Medicine Residency in 2014 with the first graduating class in 2017. By 2020, there will be an estimated nationwide shortage of 45,000 primary care physicians, and with this crisis of care in mind, Marian created the residency program to cultivate a strong pipeline of family medicine physicians who will care for local patients. As Family Medicine Residency Program Director, Willard Chung, MD, shares, “Our goal of the program is to produce family medicine physicians who, upon graduation, will be equipped to provide excellent, compassionate, evidencebased care in any setting or environment. Our physicians will be prepared to adapt to the rapidly changing health care environment and help navigate patients through our complex health care systems. Most importantly, the goal is to successfully recruit our residents to stay and fill our local primary care needs in order to become pillars of the community, representing the essence and values of family medicine.” Post-graduation, seven out of the 11 Family Medicine Residency Program graduates have chosen to practice on the Central Coast. Of the four residency graduates not practicing on the Central Coast, two are currently pursuing further training (in Clinical Informatics and Emergency Medicine), and two currently serve underserved communities in Northern San Diego and Humboldt counties. Thanks to the Family Medicine Residency Program, each primary care physician retained will be able to serve 2,500 patients a year, and the addition, on average, of three physicians to the Central Coast every year will result in providing for a current need of 7,500 patient visits per year.
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Family Medicine Physician, Rachel Zonca, DO, and Family Medicine Residency Program graduate.
Marian Regional Medical Center Hospitalist, Stephen Herrick, DO, and Family Medicine Residency Program graduate.
Recent graduates now seeing patients on the Central Coast: Nicholas Becketti, DO * Peggy Becketti, DO * Terry Chen, DO * Stephen Herrick, DO * Farnaz Pirayesh, DO * Jennifer Roberts-Kelly, DO * Rachel Zonca, DO
