Lancaster health center opens residency program for nurse practitioners

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Lancaster Health Center, which operates six low-cost health center in Lancaster County, is accepting applications for three slots in the 2018-19 residency program through the month of April.

The program is structured to give nurse practitioners and physician assistants the opportunity to gain the kind of post-graduate, hands-on experience usually reserved for physicians.

According to Kirsten Johnsen Martin, chief medical officer of Lancaster Health Center, the residency program for master’s-level practitioners is unique among community health centers in the midstate.

“The residency program is meant to offer them further training – more expansive training – in what they received in their coursework. This would be an additional year of post-graduate training before they go to their full-time practicing job,” said Martin.

Lancaster Health is a federally qualified health center, or FQHC. Such clinics receive annual funding from the federal government to provide low-cost medical, mental and dental care to low-income patients.

As a result, said Martin, the program is an opportunity for practitioners hoping to direct their career towards treating people from low-income or marginalized communities. According to the National Association of Community Health Centers, 71 percent of health center patients live at or below the federal poverty line.

“Our patients have some unique characteristics with their socioeconomic status, their demographics, and some specific health problems they’re faced with. The residents would be trained in primary care specific to the community health center setting,” said Martin.

Martin noted the program at Lancaster Health is not yet accredited by the National Nurse Practitioner Residency and Fellowship Training Consortium, a national accreditation body that argues for increased post-graduate training of nurse practitioners. The program must exist for one year before applying for accreditation.


According to the organization, 17,000 new nurse practitioners enter the workforce every year, and one in four visits to community health centers is provided by a nurse practitioner.

The Lancaster chain of health clinics is operating the program in participation with the Learning Collaborative, a program within the Connecticut-based provider Community Health Centers, Inc. In June, the program was the recipient of a $1.5 million grant from the Health Resources Services Administration in the Department of Health and Human Services to develop residency programs around the country.

The Learning Collaborative helps train and prepare health centers like Lancaster Health to facilitate a nurse practitioner residency program and selected the midstate provider in November. Martin noted the Collaborative does not provide direct funding to Lancaster Health’s own program.


According to the Pennsylvania Association of Community Health Centers, clinics like Lancaster Health serve 140,000 patients and employ 1,000 people across Dauphin, Cumberland, Lancaster, York and Franklin counties.

Amid a battle over funding for the federal government, community health centers were the subject of a prolonged debate in the U.S. Congress on when and how to pay for the community health center fund, which is responsible for 70 percent of grants received by the clinics. The fund was eventually renewed in February.

The residency program developed by the Learning Collaborative received funding from a separate federal fund and would not have been affected by the expiration of the community health center fund.

Formerly known as SouthEast Lancaster Health Services, Lancaster Health Center treats 22,000 patients at its six facilities across Lancaster County. According to its 2016-17 annual report, the nonprofit provider had $15.2 million in revenue, 16 percent of which came from the community health center fund.