EDITORIAL: MountainView Hospital launches much-needed residency program

The Las Vegas Valley's immature health care system is experiencing a prolonged growth spurt. In the aftermath of the launch of UNLV's medical school, last month MountainView Hospital got word that its internal medicine residency program had been approved by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

That officially makes MountainView a teaching hospital. As reported by the Review-Journal's Steven Moore, as many as 40 doctors in training will start working at MountainView in July.

A dearth of residency programs has greatly limited the state's ability to attract and retain doctors, especially in internal medicine and in-demand specialties. Doctors are far more likely to begin practicing in the places where they completed their residencies.

"Many of our medical students, or other students who are from Las Vegas, had to leave the state to get their training. Hopefully, this will be a chance for those doctors to come back to Southern Nevada to start their training or continue their training and stay here and practice medicine," said Dr. Darren Swenson, MountainView's chief medical officer. "We want our Nevada residents to come back home."

In addition to creating a new medical school at UNLV, this year the Nevada Legislature appropriated $10 million for expanded medical residency programs. Lawmakers recognized that it won't do the state any good to produce more medical school graduates if Nevada then exports them for their final years of training. Most of that money will be spent in Southern Nevada, which has an acute physician shortage that will take many years to cure.

But none of those state dollars were used to create the MountainView residency program. The hospital's parent, Hospital Corporation of America, spent $2 million of its own money to create the positions. However, Dr. Swenson said MountainView might seek some of those tax dollars to open a new outpatient clinic where residents would be overseen by attending physicians.

The hospital expects to interview residency applicants later this month, then select 20 first-year and 20 second-year residents to start the program. It's reasonable to think most of those residents will remain here when their training is finished.

"This is a significant step forward in the development of medical education in the Las Vegas Valley," said MountainView CEO Chris Mowan.

Indeed it is. Thanks to MountainView and HCA for making it happen.