Doctor residency program launches at Kalispell Regional

Kalispell Regional Healthcare is tapping into a new physician residency partnership that is expected to benefit rural Western Montana. 

Three new physician residents began work at Kalispell Regional on Tuesday, signaling the first group to go through the Family Medicine Residency of Western Montana program in Missoula and complete their work in Kalispell.

Drs. Kevin Kropp, T.J. Sherry and Scot Swanson will join the staff at Kalispell for the final two years of their three-year residency program, according to Dr. Justin Buls, the program’s Kalispell site director.

The Family Medicine Residency launched as a cooperative effort among Montana universities and hospitals to build a base of family physicians who are compassionate, clinically competent and motivated to serve patients and communities in the rural and underserved areas of Montana, Buls said.

All three residents are native Montanans.

Kropp graduated from Columbia Falls High School in 2005, then completed his undergraduate work at Carroll College in Helena before earning his medical degree from the Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine of Midwestern University in Glendale. He has a keen interest in musculoskeletal diseases.

Sherry received his undergraduate degrees from the University of Montana, where he double-majored in human biology and medical technology, then worked in the emergency department and intensive care unit while attending nursing school. 

He completed his medical studies at Spartan Health Sciences University on St. Lucia in the West Indies. Dr. Sherry has particular interest in obstetrics, emergency care and rural medicine.

Swanson is a Great Falls native who was an F-16 crew chief for eight years with the Montana Air National Guard. He completed his undergraduate degree at Montana State University and his medical schooling as a WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho) student at the University of Washington. He plans to practice primary care.

Over the next two years, the residents will care for prenatal to elderly patients while dividing their time between Kalispell Regional Healthcare and the Flathead Community Health Center.

Dr. Craig Eddy, former chief medical officer at Kalispell Regional Healthcare, was a key advocate for the residency partnership. Two years ago he and UM President Royce Engstrom made the rounds in Western Montana, promoting the program.

“This is a cooperative effort that is just incredible,” Eddy told the Inter Lake in 2012. He had been coordinating with the university for years to make it come about.

Eddy described an “old model” of health care in which hospitals and clinics largely operated on their own and in fact were often “heavy competitors.” The residency program instead focuses on education and not competition. 

At only two resident physicians per 100,000 people, Montana is at the bottom of state rankings for residents engaged in graduate medical education. With a quarter of the state’s active physicians at least 60 years old and likely to retire in five years, and more than a third of Montana’s family physicians practicing in Billings, Missoula or Great Falls, the need is great for new primary care doctors in the state’s more rural areas.

 Since 1998, almost 70 percent of the Family Medicine Residency graduates in Billings have remained in Montana. Statistically, medical professionals are highly likely to remain where their most recent training was completed.