HOSPITAL COMMITMENT

As medical buildings go, the announced dormitory for students at Eastern Maine Medical Center is neither especially large nor nearly the most costly. But the commitment it represents to the region is substantial, and is a visible example of the hospital’s important teaching role and of its investment in the state’s medical future.

The pressure especially on rural hospitals to attract and keep high-quality physicians is growing ever-more intense for several reasons. The population, particularly the elderly population, is increasing as the number of slots at medical school stays steady. Doctors, tired of the paperwork, the thinning profit margins in their own practices and malpractice insurance increases, are retiring earlier. And they are trying to balance family life with their practices, according to Dr. Alan Boone, the director of medical education at EMMC.

One of the better ways to attract doctors, he says, is to bring them to a hospital while they are students, let them learn in a supportive system, get to know the area and, with luck, they will want to return when they have completed medical school or after their residencies. And they might tell their colleagues about their experiences too. Eastern Maine Medical Center has been teaching students since its founding in 1892 and has doubled the number during the past five years, but the 19th-century housing it has provided these top students, according to Dr. Boone, would flunk the accommodation level for freshman just about anywhere.

The planned dorm, for which ground will be broken July 1 on Spruce Street, just above the hospital’s Hancock Street entrance, is a 3,800-square-foot, two-story structure that may make former students jealous. Its plans do not suggest it is lavish, but it is a clear step up from the current location. The dorm is expected to be completed by next spring.

EMMC has agreements with Tufts University School of Medicine and the University of New England’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, among others, to teach students for six to 12 weeks. Getting them here as students helps get them back as residents, which, in turn, says Dr. Robin Pritham, director of EMMC’s family practice residency program, encourages them to stay here. More than half of its family-practice physicians came through the residency program.

Dr. James Raczek, chief medical officer at EMMC, accurately observed the other day that the new dorm “sends a different message to the medical students of how the institution feels about them. They don’t always hear this message, even at their own medical schools.” Certainly, they would hear it more clearly from the comfort of the new housing.