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Manteo is remote "by desire," town commissioner Michael Basnight says.
Town residents like being miles from the mainland, but it does have downsides, like making it difficult to keep health care providers in the immediate area.
A partnership between the town’s health care task force and the North Carolina Medical Society may offer a solution. They’re launching a preceptor, or training program, based in the Outer Banks.
Doctors in the Outer Banks partner with students pursuing an MD, Physician’s Assistant or Nurse Practitioner degree for mentorship, and help them build connections in the communities with an eye to attracting them back as fully fledged providers.
“For these doctors and clinicians who will be precepting, someone precepted them years ago,so they’re paying it forward,” said Franklin Walker of the Medical Society Foundation’s Community Practitioner Program.
“One of the best ways to secure the future for health care in Manteo or any other community will be to build a strong pipeline,” Walker said.
The program will start with two trainees this fall at Manteo Community Health Center locations in Manteo, Ocracoke and Engelhard. Students from UNC Chapel Hill, Wake Forest University, Elon University and Campbell University will be able to get involved. Each program lasts four weeks.
Walker said funding for the preceptor hub will come from the North Carolina Medical Society Foundation’s Community Practitioner Program.
Area providers dwindle
Manteo Health Care Task Force chairman Malcolm Fearing said COVID-19 dealt a serious blow to providers nationwide. In tiny communities on the Outer Banks, where the pool of medical professionals is even smaller, numbers were seriously slashed.
Dare County has around 37,000 year-round residents. During the tourist season, which Fearing said stretches out on either side of Memorial Day and Labor Day, that swells to between 250,000 and 300,000.
The Outer Banks Hospital in Nags Head is one of the easiest places for residents to access care. But it can’t fill the gap in everything, community member Randy Hamilton told the task force.
Hamilton runs a Christian outreach organization that works with the Manteo Health Care Task Force.
“This is not going to go away,” Fearing said. “As we grow as a community, our needs — whether it’s mental health, addiction, primary care — our needs are going to grow, also.”
Three doctors left Manteo in 2022, Fearing said. It left around 2,700 people without a primary care provider. Another provider recently retired from practicing in Hatteras.
