When Dr. Noemi “Mimi” Doohan returned home to Ukiah, she did so with the intention of spending time with her father, Claude Steiner, who was moving toward the end of his life.
She interviewed with Gwen Matthews, CEO of Adventist Health Ukiah Valley, in July of 2014, and was asked, with her prior experience and expertise, if she could start a Family Medicine Residency Program and if she could start a Street Medicine Program. The answer was yes and she has done both.
As director of Adventist Health Ukiah Valley’s Family Medicine Residency Program, Dr. Doohan hit the ground running when she arrived in Ukiah in January of 2015 working with Dr. Charlie Evans for program approval from Adventist Health Corporate.
They received $50,000 in start-up funds from Partnership HealthPlan and developed an affiliation with the UC Davis School of Medicine. The next step was to gain accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
On Oct. 16, 2016, AHUV became accredited as a teaching hospital for a graduate medical program and final approval is awaited on April 26 for the family medicine program. Fourth-year medical students, Doctors of Medicine and Doctors of Osteopathy, will be applying for the program in September of 2018.
“We will get 500 applicants and interview 80,” says Doohan.
In March of 2019, doctor applicants will enter their top choices for residency programs, and committee members of residency programs will enter their top applicant choices into a software program called The Match.
The program will do the algorithm to determine the first cohort of six doctors to enter Adventist Health Ukiah Valley’s Family Medicine Residency Program. The doctors will begin their three-year training in July of 2019 and the cohort will spend its first year at UC Davis Medical School.
“They will get intensive training in an urban academic center before coming to our rural community. We have few pediatric patients in our hospital and going to UC Davis allows the doctors to practice at Shriners Hospitals for Children on the UC campus,” says Doohan.
Doctors will perform inpatient hospital work at Davis and when they return to Ukiah in 2020 training emphasis will be on surgical care and emergency medicine, the majority of which will be in primary care clinics in Lake and Mendocino counties.
They will train at the VA Clinic in Ukiah, Planned Parenthood, Consolidated Tribal Health, Adventist Health Howard Memorial, Adventist Health Clearlake and clinics in Fort Bragg.
“This is not an exclusive Adventist training program,” says Doohan. “Doctors will have the opportunity to experience the diversity in our communities and find the best match for where they ultimately want to practice.” Most of their training will be at the Family Medicine Teaching Clinic at 1050 N. State St. where Dr. Doohan, Dr. Andy Coren and Dr. Lynne Coen currently serve as physicians.
“This will be a team- based model,” explains Doohan. “Every resident trainee will be working with an attending physician and we will take care of our patients as a team working with nurse practitioners. The team includes our patients; when I teach residents, I always thank them for helping train our next generation of doctors.” Every year a new cohort will begin the academic cycle and, at the end of the training, the doctors will be Board Certified Family Physicians.
It was important for the residency program to have community engagement and, early on, Darca Nicholson, master health care practitioner and educator, held community gatherings at her home for those who were keenly interested in supporting the program.
From these meetings the Family Medicine Education for Mendocino County was created as a community based advisory board for the Family Medicine Residency Training Program. Mary Anne Landis, president of the board, became involved soon after the inception of the get-togethers.
“My interest was piqued when I left the City Council as I was starting to look for my next community involvement,” she says.
When she was on the City Council, Landis did a great deal of work around economic development. “I came to believe that sustainable economic development is foundational for a healthy community,” she says. “That was my mindset when I began attending the meetings.
“This program will benefit public health, individuals and families, the hospital and our economic health. There is a strong multiplier effect here; for every dollar invested in a family medicine doctor’s practice, seven dollars multiply out to the community.”
It takes about $2 million to start a Family Medicine Residency Program and with the help of Elizabeth Archer, in her third year as event planner for Rural Health Rocks, the program’s main annual fundraiser, the goal is coming closer to a reality.
Archer has been involved with FMEMC since its inception in 2015, before she was married and before she realized how important it would be to have a family doctor.
“We are a young family, my husband, toddler and I, and we have three different doctors; we have not been able to find a single family doctor who can serve all of us,” she says. “When I was growing up, all my family members went to the same doctor on the same day. Our doctor was able to get to know all of us really well.”
The first Rural Health Rocks concert took place at Mendocino College in Ukiah in April of 2016 and the second at Cotton Auditorium in Fort Bragg in April of 2017. The proceeds from the two concerts allowed FMEMC to grant $100,000 to Adventist Health for the lift-off of the residency program and Adventist Health Corporate matched that amount with another $100,000.
The budget for building a school from the ground up includes money for well-equipped classrooms, curriculum purchases, salaries for the doctors in the program, staff salaries, office space rental, consultant fees, conference fees, travel expenses and the development of innovative academic teaching programs.
FMEMC has partnered with Mendocino College in the production of Rural Health Rocks and proceeds from the events are shared with the college’s nursing program providing scholarships for advanced degrees for promising students.
“It’s all part of having a healthy medical team,” says Doohan.
Proceeds from the concerts also go toward the Ukiah Street Medicine Program directed by Doohan. “A lot of resident doctors are millennials who are interested in global medicine. Their experience in rural environments is similar to what they would experience in another country, global health in our own back yard. We have medical students from Davis training with us who are participating in this program. We call it a classroom without walls,” she says.
On April 14th and 15th, Rural Health Rocks will present its third annual concert with a star-studded cast of performers at Mendocino College headlined by five-time Grammy Award winner Michael McDonald, who will again donate his time to benefit the program.
Other featured artists, all of whom are donating their time, include Alex de Grassi, Amy Holland, The Mendocino Quartet, Dylan McDonald, John Mattern, Kirk Harwood, Gary Cirimelli and special guest Peyton Parker.
“This is a community love fest for primary care,” says Doohan, “with a line-up of diverse intergenerational musicians, creating a magical artistic experience to benefit the health of the people who live here.”
Rural Health Rocks will be at Mendocino College Center Theatre on Saturday, April 14 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, April 15 at 2 p.m. Doors open 45 minutes prior. Tickets are available online at brownpapertickets.com and Mendocino Book Company in Ukiah. Limited tickets will be available at the door.
