By Steve Watkins, ADVANCE EDITOR
Two and a half years ago, when Mary Washington Healthcare withdrew its financial support for the Moss Free Clinic and forced it to shut down, then-MWHC Healthcare President and CEO Mike McDermott announced that the hospital corporation’s new medical training residency programs would fill the void.
“With no plans to provide further support for the Moss Clinic, McDermott said MWHC is focused on investing in its $10 million, three-year internal medicine residency program, which started last year to recruit and train new doctors,” Pie & Chai Magazine reported in a 2024 article. “He said the hospital corporation expects 70 percent to stay and practice in the area after their residency. He said once the residency clinic is fully staffed—in the third year of operation—physicians there will be able to address many of the medical needs of the indigent clients now served by Moss.”
McDermott’s 70 percent figure was off the mark.
The first 22 physicians in the hospital corporation’s Graduate Medical Education program just graduated in June—15 in Internal Medicine, six in Family Medicine, and one in Family Obstetrics—but only 50 percent, 11 of the 22, will be practicing in the community.
That’s according to Kendra Gerlach, vice president of marketing and corporate communications, when pressed to provide figures after an MWHC press release just said that the graduates “are pursuing a range of paths, including continuing their careers at Mary Washington Healthcare, practicing in rural hospitals, or advancing into subspecialty training.”
Curiously, none of the MWHC officials contacted—Gerlach, Chief Operating Officer Summer Hughes, and Mary Washington Healthcare Board member Nick Cadwallender—would provide The Advance with the names of the graduates who Gerlach said will be staying in Fredericksburg, or where they’ll be practicing.
Nor would any of the administrators provide an explanation for why they’re withholding the information—especially when photographs and names and other identifying information about current three-year residents are posted on the Graduate Medical Education web page.
In a follow-up email to The Advance, Gerlach did include the following statement to show the degree to which the residency programs are supposed to have had an impact on the area:
“Since the Family Medicine Residency Clinic and Internal Medicine Residency Clinic opened in late 2023, resident physicians have cared for nearly 14,000 patients during more than 70,000 patient visits, nearly 30 percent of whom are uninsured or underinsured, helping expand access to primary care for some of the community’s most vulnerable populations.”
Gerlach wouldn’t provide any studies or reports or data to support or contextualize those figures, however: the definition used for “underinsured,” for example, or the exact percentages of uninsured and underinsured—patients who fit the description of those served in the past by the Moss Free Clinic.
A simple calculation shows that based on Gerlach’s figures, the average MWHC residency clinic patient saw a doctor-in-training fewer than two times a year. The Centers for Disease Control reports that for an adult, the average number of doctor visits a year is four.
Virginia’s Insurance Marketplace says an individual or family is considered “underinsured” if their non-premium medical expenses equal 10 percent or more of annual household income, if deductibles equal 5 percent or more of household income, or if their policy excludes essential health benefits or impose narrow provider networks that restrict care access.
That may or may not be the definition used by Mary Washington Healthcare.
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Steve Watkins is editor of The Advance.
Or consider reaching out to some of the MWHC executives who have recently left the corporation under Chris Newman‘s leadership… Barden, Yablonski, and Fletcher come to mind.
Keep up the great reporting! Now you need to find someone from the C-suite to act as a whistleblower.