The goal of the rural family practice residency program at North Caddo Medical Center is to adequately prepare physicians to practice in a rural setting. There are many under-served rural areas in Louisiana that are miles away from a large medical center.
The program prepares physicians to provide comprehensive care for common illnesses in inpatient, outpatient, and emergency department settings. This enables local patients to receive most of their care close to home. Appropriate consultation or transfers are arranged when necessary with specialists in tertiary care settings.
The facilities involved include a 25-bed hospital with two operating rooms, two labor and delivery suites, emergency room, procedure room and inpatient beds, an eighty bed nursing home, and an out-patient clinic.
The program includes four (4) board-certified family physicians, who provide a broad spectrum of cradle-to-grave medical care to the patients in Vivian and its surrounding areas in Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana (population base: 30,000).