Proposed legislation would boost med student rotations in rural, underserved areas

People living in rural areas face a number of health disparities, including traveling farther to access care and dealing with a scarcity of resources like pharmacies and birthing services.

In an effort to address some of the care gaps, the Senate introduced legislation in March that would fund clinical rotations for medical students in rural and underserved areas to hopefully increase the number of physicians working there over time, David Bergman, SVP of government relations and health affairs at the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM), told Healthcare Brew.

“Research shows that training in these rural and underserved communities leads to practice in those communities,” Bergman said. “The legislation is designed to actually facilitate training in areas that currently either don’t have physicians, or that can use more infrastructure to grow that physician workforce.”

The legislation—called the Community Training, Education, and Access for Medical Students (TEAMS) Act of 2024 and sponsored by Senators Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Bob Casey Jr. (D-PA)—would create a grant program under the Health Resources and Services Administration, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, to fund the clinical rotations.

AACOM, a professional organization that represents 41 osteopathic medical schools with a combined total of more than 35,000 medical students, helped craft the legislation in response to medical schools’ concerns about an “inadequate supply” of clinical rotations, according to Bergman.

“Seventy-five percent of medical schools—and that’s osteopathic and allopathic—have said that there is an insufficient number of clinical rotations,” he said. “This legislation is specifically intended to address that challenge.”

Having more clinical rotations would provide more staffing support in rural areas where workforce shortages are very common—roughly 20% of people in the US live in rural areas, but less than 10% of physicians practice there, according to a 2017 study from the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences.

While there’s no specific dollar amount in the legislation, AACOM is seeking $10 million for the program, which would fund more than 7,000 clinical rotations, according to Bergman.

If the legislation is passed, it’s unclear how long it would take to get the grant program up and running, Bergman said.

More than 40 state and national medical organizations have expressed support for the legislation, including the American Medical Association and the National Rural Health Association, according to Bergman.

“The benefits to the medical students is that there are more options for clinical rotations, and more sites that they could access, as well as exposure to different populations that they may not otherwise see,” he said. “Ultimately, we can grow the overall physician workforce, because…there’s a shortage now of physicians…and those numbers are expected to get worse as more physicians retire and the population grows.”