Kootenai | Kootenai Health | Issue 4, 2019

Kootenai Clinic Family Medicine Residency to offer behavioral health fellowship When a group of community providers teamed up with Kootenai Health to create our region’s first family medicine residency program, they did so with the intent to recruit and retain new primary care providers. Since its inception in 2013, more than 80 percent of the residents in each of the four classes have stayed in northern Idaho to establish their careers— gradually helping to offset our current physician shortage. With the residency firmly established, the faculty decided it is now time to address another medical need in our region: behavioral health care. “We know that 60 percent of all family medicine providers are working with patients who suffer from behavioral health issues, and they are doing their best to help manage those medications,” said William Miller, M.D., a longtime community psychiatrist and Kootenai Clinic Family Medicine Residency faculty member. “We don’t have enough specialists in William Miller, M.D. TO MEET THE NEED GROWING By Andrea Nagel 12