Pullman Regional Hospital receives grant to move ahead with plans for remodel, residency program

Pullman Regional Hospital has received a $450,000 grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust that will enable the hospital to begin the $1.55 million renovation needed to accommodate the family medicine residency students the site hopes to welcome in June 2022.

The grant adds to the funds already raised by the critical access hospital to renovate its administrative offices into a specific primary care space, which is required to be an accredited residency program.

Pullman Regional and WSU have worked on the possibility of hosting medical students in Pullman as part of the university’s focus on training family and primary care physicians who can work and practice in rural areas.

When students graduate from medical school, they match into residency programs where they complete their medical education under the training of physicians or specialists. Residency programs must be accredited and meet certain standards. The Pullman Regional-WSU program would accommodate three residency students each year, for three years. At its capacity, it will be able to host nine students.

The critical access hospital and the WSU Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine jointly applied for the family medicine residency in November . The accreditation committee has already conducted a site visit and will consider the application this spring and approve the program, or not, likely by summertime.

The critical access hospital attempted to expand facilities and update records system in 2019 by asking local voters to support a bond. Pullman Regional’s initial proposal was a $29 million investment that would have paid for construction of a new building in addition to updating the electronic medical records system.

The bond failed by just a handful of votes in 2019, sending Pullman Regional Hospital administrators back to the drawing board. They came up with a different, less expensive plan to get a residency program to the Palouse.

“We began fundraising for the residency when the bond failed,” said Rueben Mayes, chief development officer at Pullman Regional. “Administration looked at other options, and the decision was made to renovate the current administrative space.”

Remodeling the administrative offices in the hospital will create the nearly 5,000-square-foot space needed to meet residency standard requirements. A $1.55 million renovation will transform administrative offices into 14 exam rooms, a waiting and study area, as well as faculty offices for the program.

The remodel will begin this fall, and administrative offices will be moved off-site.

The hospital has a volunteer campaign cabinet, made up of community members and donors, which has worked to raise the funds.

The goal is to bring young doctors in training to Pullman, in the hopes that they stay and practice medicine in rural parts of the state. Research shows that students are likely to practice close to where they go for their residency, Mayes said, a statistic that keeps hospital and medical school officials hopeful.

“We’re trying to solve a problem in Eastern Washington,” Mayes said.

Residency programs in critical access hospitals are not common, but WSU is determined to expand training programs to rural settings in order to fill gaps to care across Washington state. While funding for the program will be an ongoing challenge, Mayes said the hospital is committed to it.

“This is a really good opportunity for us to train future positions,” he said.