Residency Programs

Hanford Family Practice Residency Program—Rural Track

Residency Program Offered Through Central Valley Family Health "Called to Excellence, Compassion and Wholeness"

Hanford Family Practice Residency is a very unique residency with a longitudinal curriculum.  The first year of training is spent at Loma Linda under the traditional block rotation schedule. PGY 2-3 are spent in Hanford, training under the longitudinal model. Unlike a block rotation schedule, the longitudinal curriculum allows the residents’ schedule to reflect the daily routine of a family physician.  Our residents participate in many different specialties every week in addition to providing care for their Family Medicine Center (FMC) patients.

Overview of Hanford Health Care System

The rural health clinics in Hanford and the surrounding area see 250,000 patient visits per year.  A large portion of these patients live in the underserved areas of California.  The clinic system comprises family medicine physicians as well as a broad range of specialists and is located in the same building as the FMC. The specialty clinics provide services such as high-risk OB, ENT, neurology, endocrinology, infectious disease, orthopedics, urology, surgery, pediatrics, STD/HIV/TB clinics and many others.  Our residents are scheduled into the FMC and specialty clinics according to the ACGME program requirements for family medicine.

Hanford is home to both Hanford Community Medical Center and Central Valley General Hospital.  The hospitals together have 113 beds, and each provides emergency room services.  Adventist Health recently broke ground on a new 142-bed hospital in Hanford that is expected to open the first quarter of 2010.

Hanford Family Practice Residency is an unopposed residency, which allows the residents to be involved in frontline decision-making for their patients.  If a patient requires surgical treatment, residents are the first assistant on all surgical cases and participate in the entire hospital stay.  Call from home is taken 1:4 with an inpatient load of no greater than three admits per night.  The resident is the admitting physician to all FMC patients, patients admitted while working in a specialty clinic as well as unassigned patients that are admitted through the ER. 

The FMC and hospitals are fully equipped with an electronic medical record.  The FMC participates with Loma Linda University in didactics as well as lectures by our local faculty.

Residents have the opportunity to participate in two mission trips per year.  Currently, the residency is involved in missions to Guatemala and Costa Rica, and leaders hope to expand to other locations within the next two years. 

Other benefits of our program are a housing stipend, call from home, mission trip expenses paid, affordable real estate, great school, a great medical/dental plan and the luxury of living in a small town with a large patient base and endless opportunities to learn new skills.

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