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Nearly half of the University of Minnesota Medical School’s class of 2025 is staying in the North Star State for residency. The school is hopeful this will help shore up the primary care provider pipeline. 

A majority of Minnesota falls under a geographic or low-income primary care health professional shortage area, according to 

On Friday, fourth-year medical school students across the country found out where they’ll be spending the next 3-7 years of their careers simultaneously on the 

National Resident Matching Program’s Match Day

. Of the 217 U of M near-graduates, 46 percent matched in a Minnesota residency program; 51 percent matched in primary care. 

, the University of Minnesota Medical School's senior associate dean of undergraduate medical education and an acute care surgeon, said some of those students are specifically in rural programs to help increase health care in greater Minnesota. 

“I would say that rural primary care is important,” Chipman told MPR News. “But I would even broaden that to say rural health care — which I think includes internal medicine, mental health care, surgical access, obstetrical access, those types of things. So it's beyond just what we've traditionally considered rural primary care.” 

Creating rural medical education programs in rural environments is important, he continued. For example, the U has had a 

 in place since 1971. The school also runs a 

“We do know that where you tend to do your residency, you're more likely to practice in that area. So if we create more postgraduate training programs in rural Minnesota, there's a better chance that people will stay locally once they're finished,” Chipman said. 

He’s also hopeful that artificial intelligence and natural language processing technologies will help reduce the administrative and clerical overload often associated with primary care. 

“That will alleviate a lot of the burden, allow the physician to really pay attention to the patient and what the patient's problems are,” Chipman said. “And then spending time on creating the solution rather than documenting what happened during the encounter.”

 since last year, and nearly 94 percent of the more than 20,000 slots offered by the match were filled. 

In addition to primary care, the top specialties for class of 2025 students completing residencies in Minnesota include internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, psychiatry and emergency medicine. Beyond Minnesota, Gopher graduates matched in 32 other states. 

The National Resident Matching Program also reported a renewed interest in emergency medicine and continued competitiveness in the OB-GYN specialty. 

Graduation for U of M medical students is coming up on May 2. Most residency programs begin on July 1. 

Cathy Wurzer

Host

Gracie  Stockton

Author

On Friday, fourth-year medical school students across the country found out where they’ll be spending the next 3-7 years of their careers simultaneously. Of the 217 U of M near-graduates, 46 percent matched in a Minnesota residency program; 51 percent matched in primary care. 

U of M: Medical school class of 2025 could help shore up primary care gaps

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