Internal Medicine Residency
MAHEC (Mountain Area Health Education Center) was established in 1974 and serves a 16-county region in Western North Carolina. MAHEC is the largest Area Health Education Center in North Carolina and evolved to address national and state concerns with the supply, retention, and quality of healthcare professionals. MAHEC’s approach to caring for patients is based on an advanced care team model. MAHEC's Biltmore campus houses residency training programs in family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, general surgery, pharmacy, and dentistry. The brand new internal medicine residency clinic is housed in the MAHEC Family Health Center building and includes 44 exam rooms, laboratory and radiology facilities, large spaces for precepting and teaching, a group visit space, and a resident workroom. The space has been designed to support a collaborative care model which includes behavioral health and pharmacy services.
MAHEC's Biltmore campus is also home to UNC Health Sciences at MAHEC, an academic health center in partnership with UNC-Chapel Hill that includes programs from the UNC School of Medicine, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, and UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy.
Mission Hospital is a part of the Mission Health system and a regional referral center for tertiary and quaternary care for 16 counties in Western North Carolina and parts of Tennessee, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Virginia. Mission Hospital in Asheville is an 815-bed hospital, featuring state-of-the-art facilities and offering care in all internal medicine specialties. The complex includes a brand new, 630,000 square-foot North Tower housing a 220-bed acute and critical care facility. The emergency department at Mission averages over 95,000 patient visits per year. The medical staff comprises approximately 650 physicians, with nearly all subspecialties available.
Business North Carolina ranked Mission Hospital the #1 “Best Hospital” in North Carolina for 2017 and 2018, and Mission Hospital ranked among the top 1% of “Best Hospitals” nationally in 2016 by Healthgrades. Internal Medicine residents spend over 40% of their training at Mission Hospital, rotating on general internal medicine services, neurology, cardiology, critical care units, cardiology critical care units, and in the emergency department and on consultation experiences with all internal medicine specialties. Residents also rotate with a variety of Mission-affiliated specialty practices in Asheville.
The Charles George VA Medical Center is a Joint Commission-accredited, tertiary referral, 1C facility that provides a full spectrum of health services to Veterans residing in a 23-county area of Western North Carolina. The medical center has 119 authorized acute care beds (including a 16-bed inpatient psychiatric unit), two state-of-the-art ICUs, 120 authorized community living center (CLC) beds, and 18 beds authorized for a substance use residential rehabilitation treatment program. The medical center also operates community-based outpatient clinics (CBOCs) in Franklin, Rutherford County, and Hickory, NC.
Cherokee Indian Hospital Authority (CIHA) blends state-of-the-art healthcare within a system of inpatient and outpatient resources across the Qualla Boundary and its outlying clinics. It is a unique educational experience in health systems as the health system is tribal owned and in a rural setting. Residents will rotate 4 weeks during their PGY2 year in both the ambulatory and inpatient settings serving a wide variety of patients and disease states in Cherokee County. Clinical experiences will include inpatient care in a 16-bed hospital unit, ED care, primary care clinics, specialty clinics and addiction medicine experiences. Residents will also engage in a structured curriculum in cultural humility during this rotation. The site director has an extensive history of experience with education and enjoys innovative teaching methods.
Internal medicine residents rotate at a variety of rural health sites in Western North Carolina over their three years of training, including both ambulatory and inpatient experiences. In addition, electives are offered at the University of North Carolina Hospitals System and at a variety of other sites in and around Asheville, NC.
