Emergency, Dental Care To Expand In Calvert

County Struggles With Shortage of Physicians

More dental and urgent-care services will be offered to Calvert residents next year as the county tries to cope with an increasingly serious shortage of doctors, health experts said.

Calvert Memorial Hospital is set to open a community health-care clinic next month in Prince Frederick. It will be the hospital's third such clinic in the county.

"We are having to do this because of a lack of primary care in this county," James J. Xinis, president and chief executive of Calvert Memorial Hospital, told county commissioners last week.

In the spring, a mobile team of dentists will begin rotating throughout Calvert to treat more uninsured and underinsured children, county health officials said.

Calvert needs 38 more physicians in 16 specialties over the next three years to meet the growing demands of the community, Xinis said. In the next year, 16 additional primary care doctors will be needed, he said.

Xinis said that Calvert residents often wait three months for a doctor's appointment. The hospital's two walk-in urgent-care centers are handling what should be routine doctor visits, he said. Recently, Calvert Memorial, in Prince Frederick, renovated its emergency room to accommodate the growing number of non-emergency visits, he said.

Commissioners were also told that the mobile dental team will be funded with a $106,000 state grant. Reimbursements to dentists will be increased as an incentive to treat children who receive state medical assistance, said David L. Rogers, the county's health officer.

The need for more doctors and services, such as mental health and adolescent care, is detailed in the recently released Calvert County Community Health Assessment, which can be seen at http://www.calverthospital.org.

The assessment was conducted by county health professionals at the University of Maryland's Institute for Governmental Service and Research and the University of Baltimore's Schaefer Center for Public Policy.

The shortage of physicians is particularly acute in Southern Maryland and other rural areas of the state, said Sen. Thomas M. Middleton (D-Charles), chairman of a state task force studying the issue. There are 34 percent fewer primary care providers in those areas than in the rest of Maryland, according to a draft report released by the task force in October.

Young doctors often avoid rural areas because physicians' incomes aren't high enough to help pay off medical school debt, Middleton said. He said that practices in urban areas sometimes offer more predictable schedules than those in rural communities.

Middleton said he is working on legislation for the General Assembly to help address the shortage of physicians in rural areas. In the long run, he said, students who are interested in medical careers should be identified as early as middle school and tracked to help them get into a local medical school.