Congressman Raul Ruiz addresses Coachella Valley physician shortage
Congress Dr. Raul Ruiz held a press conference Tuesday to address the physician shortage in the Coachella Valley.
The conference – held at the Borrego Health Clinic in Cathedral City – was an opportunity for the Congressman to announce the introduction of the Training the Next Generation of Primary Care Doctors Act of 2017.
The act is a bipartisan legislation to address that local shortage,which the Congressman says there is one full-time physician for every 9,000 residents in the east valley.
“The Teaching Health Center Medical Expansion Act is going to allow us to build new residency programs here in the Coachella valley, Hemet, San Jacinto areas through health centers. That’s important because we know there is a physician shortage crisis, we know we worked so hard as a community to create new residency programs and we need more because we still have a physician shortage in the area and we have been working very hard to alleviate that.”
The act will also reauthorize the Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education program and provide critical federal resources that allow primary care and dental residents to be directly housed and trained in community health centers.
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