Recently, the Fort Smith area has been experiencing a gap between medical needs and availability of health-care professionals to meet these needs. Fortunately, there are talks of adding between 50 and 60 new primary care physicians to the region to help bridge this gap. 

Sparks Health System chief financial officer Dan Hamman said Wednesday the shortfall was very large and told Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., that anything she could do to help education programs for new physicians and other health-care professionals is "a must." 

Lincoln spoke Wednesday in Fort Smith at the annual Arkansas Forestry Association meeting and visited Sparks Medical Center beforehand to talk to health system officials about the region's medical sector.

In response to a comment about the shortage of medical educators during discussions at Sparks, Lincoln said she is working diligently with other officials in Little Rock to get bring teaching medical doctors to Arkansas.  

"For example, we're not producing enough geriatricians," Lincoln said. "We're especially not producing enough geriatricians working as academic professionals." 

If there were to be more teaching doctors in Arkansas hospitals, the state would be able to produce more doctors, nurses, and other health-care professionals to help make up the shortfall the Fort Smith region is currently experiencing. 

Lincoln said, since the medical education of physicians takes so many years to complete, even doing that won't produce enough doctors to meet the need for several years, but she believes that something needs to be changed immediately before conditions can get worse.

Additional action needs to be taken to give primary and secondary students a better grounding in math and science to prepare them for careers in medicine and guide them toward jobs in the health-care profession, Lincoln said.

Unfortunately, too many potential physicians are being lost to other competing career paths such as employment in high-technology jobs. When physicians are trained in residency programs in Arkansas, the Fort Smith region could accommodate more of them, according to Dr. Margaret Tremwell, Sparks chief quality officer.  

"If we can bring some academic training out to the community, then we can stem some chronic illness" with better preventative care, Tremwell said.

Tremwell believes that enough talented medical doctors are here to train and educate even more resident physicians. Seven Arkansas Health Education Centers throughout the state provide clinical training to new doctors in residencies with an emphasis on primary care. In 2007, AHEC in Fort Smith was forced to decrease the number of residencies it has per year from eight to six due to limited funding.

"It always amazes me how hard we have to fight for AHEC. Why they always cut that program when it is so effective, I don't understand. In every budget, it is zeroed out," Lincoln said.