Ithaca.com
An innovative training program bringing medical residents to Cayuga Medical Center in 2019 for their residencies will help attract new primary care physicians to the region. With more primary care physicians, patients will find it easier to schedule medical visits and enroll as new patients with medical practices…
…Tompkins and nearby counties face a growing shortage of primary care physicians. A 2017 study by the School of Public Health at the State University of New York at Albany found large differences in where primary care physicians practice in the eight-county Southern Tier region. The area’s urban counties of Tompkins, Broome and Chemung have one primary care physician for about every 900 residents. In the region’s five rural counties, there is one primary care physician for about every 1,700 residents. Community health planners predict a growing shortage of primary care doctors in all Southern Tier counties as the region’s existing physicians retire, and its demographics shift to an older population needing more primary health care services.