They’re graduating! While most of the population is still adjusting to the idea that Fort Smith is home to a medical school, its first-ever class is preparing for graduation on May 15 at the Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine. 

The next step for the Class of 2021 is graduate medical education, also called residency. They will now be addressed as “Dr.” as they spend four or more years longer in training and studying in a specific field of medicine they have chosen. 

 They have learned where they’ll go on Match Day, when they opened envelopes to find out which program had accepted them. 

The fourth-year students and a limited number of family members, faculty, and staff gathered at the Fort Smith Convention Center. 

Each student received a sealed envelope with their residency location. After a countdown, the students opened their envelopes and a balloon drop highlighted their cheers as they learned where the next phase of their journey will take them. 

The ARCOM Class of 2021 currently has a 95% match rate, meaning the majority of students were accepted into programs in the first round of residency applications.  

“Before this process is over, we will place 100% of our students,” said Kyle D. Parker, CEO of the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education. “This achievement is a direct result of our excellent faculty preparing our students to be highly desired by residency programs throughout the country.”

“ARCOM is proud to announce our residency match statistics for its inaugural graduating class,” said Rance McClain, DO, Dean of ARCOM.   “Over half of the class of 140 students will remain in the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education and ARCOM service region.  This is a strong predictor that they will remain in this region to practice once they finish their residency training.”

Almost three-quarters of the class chose Primary Care residencies and the same percentage gained residencies within this service region.

The top five specialties matched were Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Psychiatry, Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics.

These results are pleasing, even emotional, for the core group of visionaries who helped to establish the medical colleges after the sale of Fort Smith’s public hospital, such as Board of Trustees chair, John R. Taylor. He recalled the first time he spoke to this inaugural class.

“Four years ago when this class had their orientation, July of 2017, they asked me to welcome them and I actually couldn’t almost get this out without choking up. I looked out them and said ’I’ve waited eight years to see your faces.’

“We sold the hospital in 2009 and didn’t know what we were going to do. But we had to take the money and redeploy it into the community,” he explained. “That money had to go back into the community in the most effective way. After a lot of research we wound up doing the med school. Now, May 15, I will tell them ‘I’ve waited 12 years to see you in your robes.’”

Knowing that so many new physicians will remain in this region, and that others will follow, helps meet the goal of increasing the number of health care providers who will practice here, especially in Arkansas and Oklahoma, Taylor said.

Dr. McClain explained. “Keeping in line with ARCOM’s mission, over 50% of the class matched into a residency in a state rated in the bottom 10 in ‘access to care’ by US News. If you expand that out to the bottom 20 states, we placed 75% of our class into a graduate medical education training position in an under-served state.  This is an amazing accomplishment by our students and shows their dedication to our mission as well.”

The Arkansas Colleges of Health Education opened its second building, a 66,000 square foot facility that will be the home to a School of Physical Therapy, a School of Occupational Therapy and Physician Assistant Studies. The School of Physical Therapy will welcome its first class in June 2021.  

ACHE recently announced the purchase of the ACHE Research Institute Health & Wellness Center, a 317,850 square foot facility that will contain a biomedical research laboratory and space for transformational initiatives in health and wellness. 

These first medical school graduates will be leading the way for many health care professionals who will be educated here.