Bassett Medical Center to use nearly $3M federal grant for nurse-practitioner residency program

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Bassett Medical Center will use a $2.7 million federal grant to develop a nurse practitioner primary care residency program in the Bassett network.

The Rockville, Maryland–based Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) grant awarded the funding, Bassett announced. HRSA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The nurse practitioner (NP) primary care residency will be integrated into one of Bassett’s primary care practices at FoxCare Center in Oneonta. After a year of development, the program will accept four NP residents in year two, eight in year three, and ten residents in year four.

Dr. Gregory Rys — director of the Bassett network’s nurse-practitioner residency program — was the lead researcher for the grant project.

“We envision a program that will provide an integrative training platform for new nurse practitioners so they can confidently and proficiently serve as a primary care provider in a complex health-care arena,” Rys said in a news release. “Our desired outcomes from this training program include improved job satisfaction for new nurse practitioners and for the practitioners and support staff in the primary care practice. Ultimately, we expect this residency program will lead to improved global health of the rural communities we serve by expanding access to quality health and wellness services.”

Bassett will launch its newest residency program in July 2020 in conjunction with its academic partners at Binghamton University, Upstate Medical University, SUNY Polytechnic Institute, and Columbia University. Candidates for the nurse practitioner residency-training program must be recent graduates of a masters in nursing or doctor of nursing practice program. They must also be certified as a family nurse practitioner with a “stated commitment” to practice as a primary care provider in a rural or underserved setting.

Bassett Medical Center “has a history of training for services in rural medicine,” the organization said. The hospital started its first medical-residency programs in 1927 and its first nurse-training programs in the 1950s.

This newest residency program responds to a 2010 report on the future of nursing by the Washington, D.C.–based Institute of Medicine (IOM), which is now the National Academy of Medicine. The IOM report called for residency training for all advanced-practice registered nurses, including nurse practitioners. IOM renewed that recommendation in 2015.

Bassett Healthcare Network provides care and services to people living in a 5,600-square-mile region in upstate New York. Bassett Medical Center, the flagship of the network, is a 180-bed acute care inpatient teaching facility in Cooperstown, employing 3,000 people.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com