Where physicians practicing in Appalachia in 1978 to 1990 were trained and how they were distributed in urban and rural Appalachia

Medical school graduates who graduated from 1978 to 1986 were analyzed to determine the health professions' ability worldwide to educate and place primary care physicians in rural areas of Appalachia. These data indicate that the University System of West Virginia--consisting of the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine, West Virginia University Medical School, and Marshall University Medical School--produced the most primary care physicians who began practicing in rural Appalachia during the 1980s. The West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine successfully retained 106 (26%) of its graduates in primary care practices throughout rural Appalachia, with 77 of them in rural West Virginia, making the institution the nation's leading provider of primary care physicians practicing in rural Appalachia and West Virginia during this eight-year study period. With the exception of West Virginia, these and additional data support concerns of medical educators and public health officials that physicians in Appalachia are distributed disproportionately, more to urban than to rural counties.