We believe that every person deserves great primary care. We believe that great primary care is care that is able to respond to the needs of a community. We believe that primary care is joyful and fulfilling work. We are a full-spectrum Family Medicine training program based in scenic Asheville, NC. Our community focused, not-for-profit residency program at the Mountain Area Health Education Center is set in the Blue Ridge Mountains and primarily serves urban and rural underserved populations of the Western NC region. In June of 2022, MAHEC became an FQHC look-alike, expanding our ability to offer the high quality care our patients have come to expect and upon which our community depends. Our primary practice site has consistently maintained the highest-level status as a Patient Centered Medical Home, helping to provide the best possible care for our patients and the best education for our residents.
Our goal at the MAHEC Family Medicine Residency Program in Asheville is to develop residents into highly skilled and compassionate physicians through collaborative, team-based care, quality education, innovative practice and evidence-informed decision making. Our graduates’ skills extend beyond the care of the individual patient into population health, community needs assessment, healthcare advocacy, scholarship and practice management in an evolving healthcare system. We train family physicians who can practice full-spectrum and community informed Family Medicine anywhere, from rural to urban and regional to global settings.
For more than 40 years, our curriculum has offered outstanding training in our Family Health Centers and our world-class hospital system. Residents have always been key contributors to our program’s environment of innovation. This comprehensive training is highlighted by strong commitments to global and community-based care, maternity care/women's health, behavioral medicine, geriatrics, sports medicine and rural medicine. We embrace the care of marginalized populations including patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities, substance use disorders, infected with HIV and Hepatitis C, needing gender affirming care, experiencing homelessness and transitioning out of correctional facilities. We remain committed to the care of our patients without regard to their ability to pay.
We encourage you to apply for a position with us!
Program Director
Family Medicine Residency
Special Interests: Osteoporosis, dermatology
Assistant Program Director
Family Medicine Residency
Special Interests: Simulation and inpatient medicine
Assistant Program Director
Family Medicine Residency
Special Interests: Treatment of substance use disorders, innovations in primary care and auricular acupuncture
We are pleased to offer Acting Internships (AI) to students interested in doing residency at the MAHEC Asheville Family Medicine Residency Program. Several options are available. If you are interested in doing an AI with us, please contact GMEvisitingstudent@mahec.net.
MAHEC offers a variety of student rotations in Family Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology, General Surgery, Rural Medicine, and Psychiatry for both in-state and out-of-state students interested in our residency programs. Learn more about our 4th year medical student rotations
MAHEC is committed to creating an equitable and inclusive place to work, learn, and receive care. We actively recruit physicians, staff, and students from underrepresented minorities, and we strive to implement policies and procedures that value and support diverse backgrounds and experiences. MAHEC does not discriminate on the basis of socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, spiritual practice, geography, disability, or age.
We train community oriented family physicians by promoting sustainable and fulfilling careers as leaders among diverse and innovative healthcare teams. We do this in order to address evolving needs of Western North Carolina and improve quality and access to primary care for everyone.
Class of 2017:
Class of 2018:
Class of 2019:
Class of 2020:
Beginning July 2023, we will be launching a new Clinic First curriculum with a 2+2 schedule. This restructuring is the result of our desires to make outpatient learning a central focus of the curriculum and to meet the 2023 ACGME New Core Program Requirements, which facilitates 6 months of elective time over the course of the residency program.
Below you will find our projected clinic first curriculum. Please reach out to our residency team with any specific questions you have and we would be happy to answer them.
26 weeks FHC
12 weeks OB
8 weeks medicine
8 weeks pediatrics
2 weeks newborn
2 weeks rural
26 weeks FHC
2 weeks FPS nights
4 weeks FPS days
2 weeks medicine senior
2 weeks pediatric senior
2 weeks newborn
1 week surgery
1 week GYN
2 weeks sports/rheum
2 weeks rural
10 weeks elective
26 weeks FHC
2 weeks FPS nights
4 weeks FPS days
2 weeks rural
2 weeks peds ED
14 weeks elective
Including but not limited to:
Age Distribution of FHC Patients for 2017-2018 | |
---|---|
Age | Percentage |
0-2 | 13% |
2-9 | 11% |
10-19 | 10% |
20-29 | 17% |
30-39 | 16% |
40-49 | 9% |
50-59 | 8% |
Geriatric | 15% |
Payor Mix for the Division of Family Medicine | |
---|---|
Private/Commercial | 16% |
Medicaid | 28% |
Medicare | 34% |
Other Government | 2% |
Self | 20% |
Our state-of-the-art Simulation Center is a 15,000-square-foot facility which opened in 2018. It includes high-fidelity manikins, standardized patients, task trainers, and laproscopic surgery, endoscopy/bronchoscopy, point-of-care ultrasound, and virtual reality simulators. This allows residents to work through patient case scenarios led by our own family medicine faculty and guest faculty. Residents are grouped by class to support optimal learning based experience and scenarios are typically grouped by teaching topic to hone specific skills and learning points. Each session highlights unique and powerful learning opportunities in key competencies including communication, teamwork, emergent conditions, and tasks that require well-practiced manual skills such as diagnostic and surgical procedures.
Residents enjoy the benefits of an integrated care model in their outpatient continuity clinic. This means that Behavioral Health faculty providers will work together with residents to co-manage patient care and will be available for real-time consults as needed. This model affords innumerable learning opportunities as residents partner with an interdisciplinary team of providers for daily patient care.
Additional scheduled learning opportunities included working directly with MAHEC behavioral medicine faculty, peer support specialists, and psychiatry faculty as well as community providers.
The MAHEC Mary C. Nesbitt Biltmore Campus, constructed in 2013, houses the Family Health Center, Dental Health Center, Education Building, and Ob/Gyn Specialists. The newly constructed UNC Health Sciences at MAHEC building houses the UNC School of Medicine Asheville campus, UNC Gillings School's Master of Public Health Program in Asheville, the Center for Health Professions Education, the Rural Health Initiatives team, and the Center for Psychiatry and Mental Wellness. The Family Health Center includes 33 patient care rooms, behavioral health offices, group visit space, ultrasound, x-ray, and laboratory services.
MAHEC residents train at Mission Hospital, a part of the Mission Health system and a regional referral center for 16 counties in Western North Carolina and parts of TN, SC, WV, and VA. The medical staff is comprised of approximately 650 physicians, with nearly all subspecialties available. Mission is an 815-bed hospital, featuring state-of-the-art facilities. The Emergency Department at Mission averages over 95,000 patient visits per year.
In 2020, Mission Hospital was named North Carolina's Best Hospital by Business North Carolina; it is one of the busiest hospitals in the state. Read more about Mission’s various accolades here.
Our Lifestyle Medicine Residency Curriculum, the first in North Carolina, builds on MAHEC’s tradition of delivering innovative medical education and whole-person care. It also takes advantage of Asheville’s abundance of outdoor sports and recreation, parks and greenways, local farms, and wellness practices.
Lifestyle medicine focuses on six key areas:
This evidence-based approach provides physicians with powerful tools to partner with patients to improve overall health and well-being. By preventing, treating, and even reversing conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol, lifestyle medicine can make a significant impact on health and well-being across the lifespan.
All MAHEC residents are eligible to participate in the LMRC and have the opportunity to become board eligible in Lifestyle Medicine if they so desire. Upon completion of the curriculum, residents will qualify to sit for the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine certification exam after graduation.
You can learn more in this video introduction with our program faculty and on the American College of Lifestyle Medicine website. If you have additional questions, please contact us!
Community Engagement at MAHEC
Program Overview
Loan Forgiveness
Tour of the Family Health Center
Tour of the Simulation Center
Tour of Mission Hospital
Behavioral Health in Family Medicine
Behavioral Medicine Rotation
Family Practice Service
Full Spectrum Training
GYN Curriculum
Medicine Rotation
Reproductive Health and Maternal Child Fellowship
Research
Rural Rotation
Simulation
Sports Medicine Rotation and Fellowship
Center for Healthy Aging
Hepatitis C and HIV
Integrative Medicine
Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Clinic
Office-Based Opioid Treatment
Osteoporosis Clinic
Preconception Health
Project ECHO®
Rural Health Initiatives
Skin Clinic
Nutrition
Pharmacotherapy
Behavioral Health Fellowship
Make Your Own 4th Year Fellowship
Sports Medicine Fellowship
We will resume in-person interviews in 2022. Our interview days are on Tuesday and Thursday. We will interview every week From October 11, 2022 through January 26, 2023 except for the weeks of October 24-28 for the in-training exam week and December 26–January 6 for the holidays. Our interviews begin with a casual catered dinner party hosted at one of our resident's homes the night before.
We welcome residents who would like to arrange a second look. Second look visits are arranged by appointment.
We invite you to apply to our program via the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS). We will review your application and contact you if we wish to invite you for an interview. Typically, our interview season runs from mid-October through mid-December. We have 16 interview date options and welcome applicants back for informal second looks.
A complete ERAS application is required, including:
The Graduate Medical Education (GME) programs will select from among eligible applicants on the basis of residency program-related criteria such as their preparedness, ability, aptitude, academic credentials, communication skills, and personal qualities such as motivation and integrity.
An applicant must meet or exceed the following minimum qualification(s) to be eligible for selection and appointment to MAHEC’s GME residency programs:
Special laws and regulations apply to international medical graduates who wish to enter the United States to undertake graduate medical education. MAHEC's policies and procedures regarding graduates of international medical schools comply with federal and state laws and regulations and MAHEC's commitment to graduate medical education.
Graduates of medical schools outside the United States and Canada must have a currently valid certificate from ECFMG. Applicants must successfully pass both Step 1 (basic medical) and Step 2 (clinical knowledge and skills) of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE).
While MAHEC does not sponsor a visa, the international medical graduate applicant must also possess a current/valid visa option or other status governed by the U.S. Immigration Regulations to participate in a GME program.
Finally, the North Carolina Medical Board requires that physicians who are graduates of schools that are not accredited by the LCME or the AOA (foreign medical schools) must be individually certified by ECFMG, have successfully completed at least three years of accredited graduate medical training, and have passed the USMLE or its equivalent to be eligible for application for full licensure. An international medical graduate must complete all other application requirements required by MAHEC and the GME program.