A large federal grant will help La Clinica establish its Advanced Practitioner Residency Program, an initiative meant to grow the primary care workforce in Southern Oregon.

The Health Resources and Services Administration — part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — has given La Clinica $2.8 million to cover 60% of resident nurse practitioners’ salaries; a portion of the salaries of Kathryn Warner and Sarah Bienieck, the residency director and manager, respectively; and other program costs for four years.

In early April, La Clinica announced the residency program as a project of The Learning Well, the health provider’s service that educates staff, patients and the community.

Back then, the program was just for nurse practitioners. In May, La Clinica’s medical leaders decided to expand the program to include physician assistants.

The grant — called the HRSA Nurse Practitioner Grant — will support the nurse practitioners in the program.

Warner said the nurse practitioners and physician assistants will be a single cohort working and learning together.

“They really won’t be separated,” she said. “In the larger vision, in the future, I think it’s likely that we’ll have some subdivision in terms of specialty — so maybe a mental health subspecialty, that kind of thing — but in terms of primary care specialty, it’s just going to be advanced practice, and we’re just including NPs and PAs all together.”

A 2020 projection from the Oregon Employment Department’s Workforce and Economic Research Division said that Jackson and Josephine counties will need hundreds of additional health care workers — including 141 nurse practitioners (a 64.4% increase) and 67 physician assistants (36.8% percent increase) — by the decade’s end.

La Clinica plans to start with six residencies. Four slots have been filled with three nurse practitioners and one physician assistant; the health provider is accepting applications for the remaining two.

The program will begin in late September, instead of October as originally announced, and mostly take place at Phoenix Health Center. Susan Hearn, an officer of The Learning Well, said the program will open up La Clinica’s ability to see new patients. Residencies last for one year.

Each week, residents will spend two to three days in a clinic treating their own patients under a preceptor’s supervision. For about half a day, residents will shadow a primary care provider serving as a mentor. They will devote a full day to working with a specialist, such as a cardiologist, endocrinologist or gastroenterologist. Residents will then spend half a day to a full day on classwork: reviewing case studies, learning about health equity, getting leadership training and working on a project in a special focus area.

Eventually, the program will be accredited through the Consortium for Advanced Practice Providers. La Clinica expects to get the accreditation in fall 2024, after a full year is completed.

The program will help fill a widening void in Southern Oregon’s primary care options. The region faces a shortage of primary care providers — from nurse practitioners and physicians assistants to primary care physicians.

“None of them are going into this in very large numbers across the country,” Warner said.

A residency program like La Clinica’s, meant to attract and retain medical professionals, is rare in Oregon. The only other residency program accredited through the consortium in the state is at Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Portland, and that program is only for nurse practitioners.