The innovative partnership between Piedmont Health and the University of North Carolina School of Medicine has proven to be a success and the program is growing and on track to expand even more, administrators say.

The Teaching Health Center Family Medicine Residency Track, a partnership designed to increase primary care capacity in a rural part of Caswell County, has had a “tremendous impact” on the Prospect Hill Community Health Center, where it is based, according to Me’Shall Poole, the center’s director.

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(L-toR: Dr. Christina Drostin, Dr. Mimi Miles, Dr. Evan Ashkin)
“With the residency program, not only are we able to increase access to medical care for the community but we are also able to train new physicians with the hopes of retaining them,” Poole said. “This is a ‘win-win’ for both our patients and the community of Prospect Hill.”

UNC administrators state that the partnership benefits them as well by helping to steer physicians into rural areas of the state, where experts report there is a growing shortage of primary care providers.

When it was formally launched in July 2012, the Health Center Family Medicine Residency Track was the first of its kind in the state. Under the program, physicians from UNC medical school’s Department of Family Medicine practice for two years at the Prospect Hill Community Health Center located at 322 Main Street in Prospect Hill.

The program began with two physicians and added two more in June of 2013. Another two will be added in June of 2014, Poole said. The plan calls for a total of six physicians by 2014.

The first two participants in the program were Dr. Mimi Miles, who went to college at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and then to Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va., and is an avid sports participant; and Dr. Christina Drostin, who earned a medical degree and master’s in public health at UNC-Chapel Hill and gained a passion for community health from summers spent in high school and college working on public health projects abroad.

In June, the program added Dr. Caroline Roberts, who grew up in Burlington, N.C., and graduated from UNC, then moved to Washington, D.C., where her experiences included working on a community research program studying overweight and obesity in youth and adolescents; and Dr. Megan deMariano, a Massachusetts native who got her undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Massachusetts system and served in the Peace Corps for 2 years.

In addition, Prospect Hill has three UNC faculty members who see patients in the health center and are deeply involved in the program: Dr. Narges Farahi, who did her undergraduate degree at UNC, graduated from University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and completed a residency and fellowship in Family and Community Medicine and Family Medicine Obstetrics, respectively; Dr. Jodi Roque, who graduated from the University of Vermont-Burlington and received two awards, Bridges to Excellence Medical Home and NCQA Patient Centered Medical Home (2013); and Dr. Evan Ashkin, a long-time medical provider at Piedmont Health’s Prospect Hill Community Health Center who graduated from Tufts University School of Medicine in 1988, completed his residency in Family Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco in 1991, and is an Associate Professor of Family Medicine at UNC Chapel and a regional Medical Director for Community Care of North Carolina.

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(L-toR: Dr. Mimi Miles, Dr. Evan Ashkin, Dr. Christina Drostin)
They join Prospect Hill Community Health Center’s clinical providers. Dr. Bill Selvidge, Dr. Oscar Cornelio and lead provider Monica Schmucker, FNP. Dr. Selvidge has worked at Prospect Hill since 1989 and is an adjunct assistant professor in UNC’s Department of Family Medicine, and Dr. Cornelio also is an adjunct assistant professor in UNC’s Department of Family Medicine.

When fully implemented, Piedmont Health’s partnership with the University of North Carolina School of Medicine is expected to result in about 2,200 additional patient visits per year at the Prospect Hill Community Health Center. Poole said she hopes to see the program spread.

“We want other healthcare centers to take notice and to replicate what we are doing here because it works,” she said. “It works for improving access to quality care. The future of this program is just that, to change how we train primary care doctors in hopes of retaining them in rural areas.”