HMSOM Launches The Primary Care Scholars Program to Address Critical Doctor Shortage

The United States will be short by about 68,000 primary care physicians by the year 2036, according to a federal estimate.

The situation is already acute in the State of New Jersey, which already has the lowest concentration of family physicians, at about 17 doctors per 100,000 residents of the Garden State.

The Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine (HMSOM) has devised at least part of the solution with The Primary Care Scholars Program, offering fully-covered tuition for the most promising students who pledge to pursue primary care from the outset of their careers.

The program has selected five of the most promising students from the latest 2024 Cohort of more than 160 students enrolled.

These five students have agreed to pursue family medicine, pediatrics, or internal medicine on the school’s accelerated three-year degree track. If they complete their M.D., and then complete their residency at one of the hospitals across the Hackensack Meridian Health network, their tuition will be totally covered, with all “debt” forgiven.

“This is a really organic way we can attract great talent to where it is needed most,” said Jeffrey Boscamp, M.D., president and dean of HMSOM. “We are attracting some of the brightest minds we have and directing them toward careers which will be enormously fulfilling and critical to people’s needs in the decades to come across healthcare, but especially here in New Jersey.”

The concept was inspired by Geisinger Health System’s Abigail Geisinger Scholars Program, which was started in 2019. Similarly, HMSOM plans to bolster the ranks of primary care in Hackensack Meridian Health, New Jersey’s largest and most comprehensive health network.

Naomi Szabo-Wexler, from the school’s 2024 cohort, is one of the program’s first students. She is thrilled about the flexibility the program promises to afford her as she pursues one of the primary-care specialties in her career to come. The possibilities unlocked for her remind her of her grandfather, who was discouraged from pursuing his dreams to become a physician due to his lack of means, the better part of a century ago.

“My grandfather wanted to have a career in medicine,” said Szabo-Wexler. “He was born in New Jersey, but grew up in what he described as rural Florida. When he went to his high school advisor, he was laughed out of the office because they said he was too poor to be a doctor.”

While Szabo-Wexler’s grandfather would achieve personal and professional success, he was forever haunted by a dream deferred.

“He did a lot of other things serving in the army during World War II and going to college on the GI Bill. He went on to have a wonderful, varied career in engineering and then sales,” recalled Szabo-Wexler, “but that initial rejection was never forgotten by him or by his family.”

The Primary Care Scholars Program, she said, is what can make her own dreams a reality in the 21st century.

“There are already barriers in place for people to become doctors,” said Szabo-Wexler. “Sometimes, even if they hear the call, the financial barriers are too great for them to pursue it.”

But Szabo-Wexler said initiatives like The Primary Scholars Program not only empower such a pursuit; they incentivize them.

“For me, I like the certainty - where I’m going, and what I’m doing,” she said about becoming a primary care physician. “I really feel cared for by Hackensack Meridian Health in that sense.”

“We’re building a supportive network for clinicians-in-training, and that really matters to me.”