MILLSBORO -- Marya Grier moved to Millsboro from New Jersey in November, and one of her top priorities was to find a primary care physician.
Although Grier, 70 and on Medicare, is on medication and needs to be monitored by a doctor regularly, she's been struggling to find care. One doctor cut back on his practice and another said it would be a six-month wait for an appointment.
For now, she's continuing to make the three-hour trek to see her doctor in New Jersey.
"It's kind of upsetting in a way," she said. "I'm certainly not in any dire straits, but if I had any issues with the medication, who would I go to? My only option is to go to Jersey, but that's a day trip and that's expensive."
Sussex County is considered a medically underserved area by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
According to the University of Wisconsin's Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's County Health Rankings, Sussex County has 157 primary care physicians and a population to primary care physician ratio of 1,208-to-1. The same figure in New Castle County is 806-to-1, while the national benchmark that has been set is at 631-to-1.
"In a perfect world, we would have at least one doctor to every 630 patients," said Megan Williams, director of Population Health at Beebe Medical Center. "The idea there is that if we had a provider for every 630 patients, (the provider) would have ample time, knowledge and resources to provide robust primary care for their patients."
Williams said one reason the county has "a pretty dramatic shortage of primary care providers in the area" is its rural setting.
"We don't necessarily have medical education or a medical school here in Delaware, or certainly close to Sussex County," she said. "By virtue of that, we don't have folks who are doing a lot of their training and education here. Right out of the gate, that puts us at a disadvantage."
Kelly Griffin, director of marketing and communications at Beebe, said the wait for a someone who uses the center's physician referral line to seek primary care is usually two to three months. More than 200 local physicians who are affiliated with Beebe and deal with family practice and internal medicine are on the list.
"Often we can help, but it depends on whether they want to travel a little bit further," she said.
Beebe actively recruits for additional primary care physicians. Marilyn Hill, director of physician services, said there are fewer people who aspire for physician positions, for a number of reasons, including the high costs to get to that point.
"It's difficult to entice people to go into it," she said. "It's very expensive to go through medical school, residency and fellowship training. You have to have a passion for it and want to do it for the right reasons."
Hill said when she recruits, she tries to promote the workplace community and the local community and focuses on the positives.
Grier said she believes the wait is so long because many local doctors are retiring and no one is taking their place.
Sussex County Administrator Todd Lawson said while there are no marketing plans at this time to bring more physicians into Sussex County, discussions with Beebe and Nanticoke Health Services have taken place with that in mind.
"We all recognize the fact that health care and our health care industry locally is being stretched right now with our population shifts, so we need to plan for that," he said.
Lawson said despite having the beach and the infrastructure, as well as being two hours away from three metropolitan areas, the county is having issues attracting the talent.
"Getting those young professionals in here is a challenge," he said. "We've had many discussions on how to combat that. I don't have an answer that we have a plan in place, but we recognize the issue."
As for Grier, she is still undecided about what she will do.
"I'm sort of hanging on the edge as to what I'm going to do next," she said.
On Twitter @JonBleiweis
Source: www.delmarvanow.com
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