Community Regional Medical Center in downtown Fresno will host seven additional UCSF Fresno medical residency positions with newly approved federal funding. The new positions are among 400 nationwide created and allocated this year to help build a physician workforce and address a growing physician shortage.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced the distribution of this year’s additional Medicare-supported graduate medical education positions in December. The positions were created and allocated under the Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) of 2023, approved by Congress and supported by our local federal leaders, including Congressman Jim Costa (D-Fresno).
Since 2023, a total of 11 UCSF Fresno residency positions at Community Regional have been added through the CAA, including four in surgery, 3.33 in Emergency Medicine, 2.66 in Obstetrics and Gynecology, and 1.37 in Internal Medicine. These positions will be filled gradually over the next few years.
Community Regional is home to the only Level I Trauma Center and comprehensive Burn Center and serves as the safety-net hospital for the region. The allocation of additional residency positions enables UCSF Fresno and Community Regional to enhance the training and retention of physicians in the San Joaquin Valley, which has one of the lowest physician-to-patient ratios in the state, serving a population with high rates of chronic diseases.
UCSF Fresno was founded in 1975 to address the physician shortage and meet the region’s health care needs. As a regional campus of the top-ranked UCSF School of Medicine, UCSF Fresno trains more than 300 residents and fellows annually.
In a decades-long collaboration with Community Regional, its longtime primary clinical training partner, UCSF Fresno has become the leading contributor to the regional physician workforce and is the largest academic physician training program between Sacramento and San Francisco to the north, and Los Angeles to the south. Forty percent of UCSF Fresno graduates stay in the region to provide care, and 70% stay in California.
“We are grateful to Community Health System, our primary clinical training partner, for supporting medical education and extremely excited to have received these additional positions at Community Regional,” said Jose M. Barral Sanchez, MD, PhD, Vice Dean at UCSF Fresno. “Every physician trained here is another doctor who contributes to greater health care access and improved health outcomes in the San Joaquin Valley and Central California.”
The distribution of additional Medicare-supported residency positions comes at a financially challenging time for graduate medical training at teaching hospitals.
Medicare provides substantial payments to teaching hospitals to cover the costs of residency training, including salaries and benefits, which helps offset the higher costs associated with patient care during residency training. Federal funding, however, had been stagnant since 1997, when the Balanced Budget Act imposed a cap on the number of Medicare-supported residency positions at teaching hospitals nationwide.
Teaching hospitals like Community Regional have stepped up to shoulder the financial cost of adding positions without federal support, typically funding more than the program pays, but this has limited growth in hospital and training programs.
For example, Community invested $42 million in medical education in 2025.
The CAA approval of additional positions by Congress in 2021 and again in 2023 allows hospitals to further increase the number of physicians being trained at their facilities.
“Our Central Valley faces a deepening, and very critical doctor shortage with doctor-to-patient ratios significantly lower than other regions in the state,” said Community Health System’s Thomas Utecht, MD, Senior VP, System Chief Medical Officer. “These new residency positions with our UCSF Fresno partners are a meaningful way to invest in additional physician training to help with the acute shortage in our area.”
“We are grateful for the opportunity to grow our programs through another successful collaboration with Community,” said Stacy Sawtelle Vohra, MD, Assistant Dean for Graduate Medical Education and Designated Institutional Official at UCSF Fresno. “Having additional residency positions in the Central Valley is critical to meeting the health care needs of our community.”
About Community Health System
Community Health System has grown to include: Community Medical Centers’ four hospitals, which provide the majority of Fresno County’s hospital care and expertise typically found only in larger cities; Community Provider Network, our physician support division that includes Community Health Partners, a fast-growing medical foundation consisting of primary and specialty care providers; and Community Care Health, one of the region’s largest HMO health plans.
About UCSF Fresno
A regional campus of the UCSF School of Medicine, UCSF Fresno plays a vital role in expanding access to health care in the San Joaquin Valley, training residents, fellows, and medical students for the region and state, conducting research that addresses regional health issues, and academically preparing students from the Valley to pursue careers in health and medicine. Established in 1975, UCSF Fresno celebrated 50 years of training doctors and improving health in the heart of California in 2025.
