The Lugar Center addresses access challenges faced by rural communities through its primary focus of training family medicine physicians to return to the rural communities of Indiana and Illinois to practice medicine.  Medical literature currently predicts by the year 2020, the United States will experience a shortage of 20,400 family medicine physicians.  This shortage will be greatly exacerbated in our rural areas. As of January 2018, we have graduated 197 physicians from the 3-year Family Medicine Residency Program (See Maps). 95 of these graduates were enrolled in the rural training track, and 84% of which entered practice in rural and/or underserved areas.

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The program celebrated its 40th Anniversary in September 2016. Since its inception, residents have delivered 11,400 babies, treated over 45,000 patients in the hospital, and seen over 520,000 patients in regular office visits altogether serving over 50,000 patients in the Wabash Valley and surrounding area. The program which was designed to meet the rural needs in the Wabash Valley is now proud to have graduated

40 of the 60 currently practicing family physicians in this area.

 

Producing family medicine physicians who want to practice in rural America is vital to the health and well-being of rural residents across this great state and the nation.

The Lugar Center in partnership with the Union Hospital Family Medicine Residency will continue to rise up to the challenge of addressing healthcare shortages and will persevere in these efforts.

Beyond training providers the Center has also invested in establishing new access points in the Wabash Valley.