Seton to Train More ER Docs with $2 Million Gift

By Mary Ann Roser

Austin American-Statesman

April 6, 2011

Hoping to increase the number of emergency medicine doctors in the Austin area, a physicians' group has donated $2 million to the Seton Family of Hospitals to train more of them.

The gift is from Emergency Service Partners, a doctors' group that serves 23 emergency departments in Texas, including all of Seton's, in a region from New Braunfels to Flower Mound and Kerrville to Palestine, according to its website.

The main benefit to the public is "emergency medicine physicians who will train in Austin will stay in Austin," said Greg Hartman, a senior vice president of Seton and president and CEO of University Medical Center Brackenridge.

The new three-year residency - specialty training that doctors receive after graduating from medical school - will be offered to eight doctors a year starting in July 2012, with instruction overseen by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Seton and UT Southwestern collaborate to provide training to medical students and residents in other specialties at Seton hospitals.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education , which approves such training in the U.S., must sign off on the program, which is the first residency created since Southwestern affiliated with Seton in 2009.

Seton operates nine acute care hospitals and has the biggest challenges staffing its rural emergency departments, said Dr. Christopher Ziebell , chief of emergency medicine at UMC Brackenridge, a publicly owned, Seton-run hospital.

"We saw that gap getting wider and wider despite our successful efforts to recruit" more emergency medicine doctors, said Ziebell, who is on the board of Emergency Service Partners.

The residents will rotate through the rural hospitals, spending about half of their time in the ER and the other half in different parts of the hospital.

"Creating the residency is the only way to grow our own" doctors, Ziebell said, adding that 80 percent of doctors tend to stay and practice within 50 miles of where they completed their residencies.

The Texas Medical Association said its data indicate that residents often end up setting up a practice within 100 miles of where they completed their training.

Austin-area residents will benefit from the medical research residents do, Ziebell and Hartman said.

Research brings jobs to an area, Ziebell said, and "it's a win-win for everyone across the community."