Description

The Rural Residency Planning and Development (RRPD) program, funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), aims to improve and expand access to healthcare in rural communities by supporting the creation of new sustainable rural residency programs. These programs, including rural track programs (RTPs), must be accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).

The program targets the development of residency programs in qualifying medical specialties: family medicine, internal medicine, preventive medicine, psychiatry, general surgery, and obstetrics and gynecology. The goal is to increase the number of physicians trained and ultimately practicing in rural areas to address physician workforce shortages.

Eligible rural residency programs must:

• Be accredited physician residency programs.
• Train residents in clinical sites physically located in rural areas (as defined by HRSA’s Federal Office of Rural Health Policy) for more than 50% of their residency time.
• Focus on producing physicians who will practice in rural communities.

The RRPD program provides start-up funding to establish new rural residency programs or to support existing programs applying for a permanent complement increase to train additional residents at new rural training sites as part of an RTP. Programs that have already received accreditation or permanent complement increases before the application deadline, or those seeking to increase resident numbers without adding new rural training sites, are not eligible.

Funding supports the development of programs that are sustainable long-term through stable funding mechanisms such as Medicare, Medicaid, and other public or private sources.