MOULTRIE – The “seeds that were planted” with PCOM South Georgia five years ago seem to be flourishing and growing. The Moultrie-Colquitt County Development Authority (MCCDA) was given a brief update on PCOM South Georgia’s current growth and its vision of expansion at a meeting on Monday.

Dan Jeter, MCCDA board member and liaison to PCOM, introduced Dr. Jay Feldstein, president and CEO of PCOM.

“He does a great job in bringing quality osteopathic medicine training to both Philadelphia. …and the Suwannee campus. And now we’re fortunate to have him here at the Moultrie PCOM South Georgia campus, “ Jeter said and also recognized, Bryan Ginn Jr., chief campus officer of PCOM Georgia.

Jeter said he had a chance to go out that day to meet with Feldstein at the campus and noticed two things. He said he noticed an award posted at the entrance where the MCCDA was given the Regional Deal of the Year Award by the Georgia Economic Development Association for achieving the expansion of PCOM into Colquitt County. He referenced what Daniel Dunn, the MCCDA chair at the time, said on receiving the award. He sad that the seeds that had been planted with PCOM have taken root and have begun to transform healthcare, not only in Moultrie but in the South Georgia region of the Southeastern United States.

“When I saw Dr. Feldstein this morning, the first thing I said was, ‘Y’all need a new parking lot. You need more spaces out here’,” Jeter said and also went on to say that, as he left, he drove through the lot and started counting cars.

He said there were 134 cars out there at around 10:30 a.m. and that included students, faculty and people who were coming to Moultrie.

“Either living here, spending money here or obviously getting an education and hopefully then going to continue their practice in South Georgia,” he said.

Jeter said that a lot of what was started five years ago could be seen in fruition out at the campus now. He then asked Feldstein to share some of the PCOM’s success over the past five years and the vision that he has for the future.

“I just want to thank everybody here in the entire community for your support. We wouldn’t be here without your support. And we’re committed to rural healthcare,” Feldstein said.

He said that PCOM’ has an urban campus, a suburban campus and a rural campus and the school’s priority was to always take care of underserved communities.

“I just want to thank you for that and to applaud you for that. We just love being here,” he said.

He went on to say that this was a great community and the students got an amazing experience and a lot of them have stayed.

“And the key for them is doing graduate medical education. That’s their residency. That’s where they specialize and most of our students specialize in primary care and family practice and general internal medicine. And the goal is for them to stay here to increase the physician workforce in rural South Georgia,” Feldstein said.

He said that they were accomplishing that mission because 67% of the class are from Georgia and about 35% are from rural Georgia. He said that they started out small and were only allowed to have a class size of 59 students per year. He said the class size is limited by the number of rotations in hospitals in graduate medical education.

“So we were forced to start small with a class size of 59 but now that we’ve graduated our first class, we’re allowed to request a class size expansion,” he said.

He said that in the last four years, their educators have worked in the community to grow their clinical rotations and to continue to grow graduate education.

“So we’re going for a class size expansion of an additional 35 students per year in Moultrie. So that will bring the total student body, if that goes through, over a four year period, to 400 students,” Feldstein said.

He clarified that they wouldn’t all be on campus but the third and fourth years would be out in the community doing their rotations in various areas. He said that was a significant increase because that would be close to another 140 students more than is currently enrolled at the medical school, now.

“So that’s going to require more staff, more faculty. And that’s going to require more housing and we’re out of space already,” he said. “So that means we either add-on with new construction to our existing facility or to look at surrounding property for expansion.”

He said the most eminent development that has the highest priority is to bring in additional physician students to the area and then, they would look at additional programs.

Feldstein said that he had talked with Jim Matney, president and CEO of Colquitt Regional Medical Center, that morning and they had discussed starting an anesthesiology assistant program because there’s not enough nurse anesthetists and anesthesiologists to go around in the area.

“And then we’ll also revisit some of your other programs that we’ve talked about,” he said and mentioned speech pathology and audiology.

He said they did want to be careful about how they compete with other schools’ programs in the area when they looked at which programs to add to the PCOM South Georgia curriculum.

’So, that’s really the uptake. We’re ruled by accreditors. We can just decide that we want to increase our class size. We have to go through an accrediting body,” he said.

They are in the process, he said, and if they get approved, the class size increase would start in the fall of 2025.

“Which means we would have to start construction and start getting ready for these students in 2024,” Feldstein said in closing.

Greg Yarbrough, MCCDA board chair, said that the EDA was definitely behind what PCOM and its expansion and they want to continue participating whenever they were ready “to pull the next trigger.”

“Well, as soon as we get notified that we get approved for the class expansion, I’ll be back. With details,” Feldstein replied.

Colquitt County Administrator Chas Cannon asked what kind of acreage they were looking at expansion-wise and Feldstein told him that it was more square feet than acreage.

Jeter said that the original was build was 77,000 square feet and that the school needed to be up to 100,000 square feet.

Feldstein said that they get over 3,000 applicants for 59 spots says that this school has a draw and when Jeter asked why that was he responded, “Well I think our brand carries some weight in the osteopathic profession in the medical students and there’s a lot of kids today that want to do rural medicine. It’s kinda hot right now for a lot of medical students.”

Jeter asked what some of the challenges that the school might face in getting students to choose to attend PCOM over other schools and he asked Joanne Jones, Chief of Campus Operations, to address it.

She said that students, who would potentially be out-of-state students, would choose a school in their own state because they would get tuition assistence. She said that money that the school might get from the state, at some point, could go to tuition assistance to help with that challenge.

“Locally, housing is an issue. It’s hard to find housing for the students, especially, when they’re…if they’re still an undergrad and we’re accepting them, they’re not getting out until May and they need to come in June or July, and by that point, everything that’s available has already been rented by somebody else that’s here. So there’s a big housing challenge that we do have,” Jones said.

Feldstein said that the housing transfers to the residency programs because the residents need housing, as, well, and most of the time the residents have families.

“The other thing is, too…third and fourth year, we’re really trying to keep them local for their rotation sites, so, that we have them match into the programs that are here for residency,” said Jones.

She said that these third and fourth year students are staying here for their rotations instead of moving out so, now, there is a cumulative effect of five years.

Jeter told a story about seeing two doctors in a local restaurant that he recognized from the newspaper. They were PCOM Suwannee graduates that had done their residency in Moultrie and were now in practice here.

“They did their residency here and chose to stay here, as a result,” he said.

Jeter said that he had gotten mail from PCOM that day and, in it, he read that the PCOM South Georgia students had 100% acceptance in residency matches, which is significant. Feldstein added that the students would 100% match for residency programs.

“We’re turning out quality physicians,” said Feldstein.

Jeter said that PCOM’s numbers on rural communities that don’t have doctors is a significant thing.

“And the fact that PCOM has made the commitment to try to bring doctors to let them experience the life in South Georgia and then to set that as a goal to serve and to provide the needed care just needs to be repeated time and time again,” he said.

Jeter also said, to have a network of availability of facilities and services by qualified, trained doctors, that are willing to participate in rural healthcare, is vital.

Before the close of the meeting, Dunn spoke up and said he couldn’t believe that it’s been five or seven years since he and former president of the MCCDA Darrell Moore had taken a trip to Philadelphia and met with Feldstein.

He said that when he had accepted the award that Dan had previously mentioned, he said in his speech that,”Colquitt County has been known over the years as being an agricultural county. And a lot of crops growing here. Millions and billions of seeds planted every year in this county. …Out of those billions of seeds that are planted, there’s a crop that grows and feeds this nation and clothes this nation. But to me, there’s never been a more important seed planted in the ground than when we planted PCOM here.And the impact that it can have on this community and change this community. So, thank y’all for giving Moultrie a shot and we hope to see you continue to grow.”