Wisconsin med students flock toward primary-care positions on Match Day

March 19 was a big day for medical students throughout the country. It wasn’t St. Patrick’s Day or the first day of spring: It was Match Day, the day med students discover their residency-program placements for the next three to five years.

UW-Madison’s med school matched its 170 students to their desired residency positions at a record rate of 96 percent, while the Medical College of Wisconsin received matches for 194 of its 203 graduating seniors.

This year’s Match Day also turned out to be a big win for primary care and the future of Wisconsin health care. About 40 percent of UW students chose fields such as family medicine, internal medicine and pediatrics as their specialty, and about 30 percent of the Medical College grads did the same.

This is a heartening development considering the growing shortage of physicians in primary care. For instance, The Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog reported last week that nationally, 9 percent of first-year resident positions in family medicine went unfilled this year, even as family medicine programs decreased the number of available positions. By and large, students are choosing more lucrative specialties such as cardiology, surgery and dermatology, especially when faced with giant education loans.

In addition, a record number of students chose residency programs in Wisconsin, lending strength to the state’s health care system overall and helping to ameliorate shortages at hospitals and clinics in underserved areas. The Medical College of Wisconsin Affiliated Hospitals residency programs will receive 250 recent graduates from around the world. More than one-fifth of the UW-Madison graduates will begin residencies at UW training programs.

The 2009 classes at both schools will graduate in May, and most of the new physicians will begin their residencies in June or July.