Aiken regional medical center family medicine residency

Aiken Regional Medical Centers recently welcomed its first group of residents to its three-year accredited Family Medicine Residency Program. Six physicians will complete three years of residency training taught by both hospital medical staff and community-based academic members.

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Dr. Isaiah Steffen, MD
Residency Program Medical Director/Preceptor
OUR RESIDENTS
Marwa Meguid, MD
Mohammed Almamun, MD
Nicholas Jaeggi, MD
Huma Nawaz, MBBS
Roberto Palou De Jesus, MD
Tarun Parvataneni, MBBS

“Welcoming our first residents is a momentous milestone for our hospital and the community, and our patients and the community will benefit most from the residency program,” said Jim O’Loughlin, chief executive officer at ARMC. “We are confident when residents are immersed in our community they will want to reside and practice here long-term. Our goal is to attract competent physicians, provide advanced training and retain the physicians and their families in our community. This will provide Aiken and our surrounding communities increased access to quality health care.”

Aiken Regional’s Graduate Medical Education Program will help address physician shortage concerns within the CSRA and nearby areas in South Carolina. According to the American Medical Association, following residency training, 64.6% of family medicine residents practice in the same state in which they trained.

“Our family medicine program will train physicians within both the hospital and community setting, with the goal of improving access to health care in our community, long-term,” said Dr. Sireesha Vemuri-Reddy, chief of hospitalist medicine and family medicine program director at ARMC. “It’s a privilege to welcome the Family Medicine Program and it’s first group of residents to Aiken, and I look forward to the growth of the program and educating the next generation of exceptional physicians.”

The first Aiken Regional Family Medicine Program members who will graduate from the program in Spring 2025 are: Dr. Mohammed Almamun, Dr. Nicholas Jaeggi, Dr. Marwa Meguid, Dr. Huma Nawaz, Dr. Roberto Palou De Jesus and Dr. Tarun Parvataneni.

“We hope to continue to grow our graduate medical education program and become accredited for additional residency programs in the near future,” said O’Loughlin.

Aiken Regional received initial accreditation from the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) of its first graduate medical education program, Family Medicine in fall 2021. Aiken Regional’s Family Medicine Residency Program is a three-year (36-month) postgraduate program. The program will welcome its first six residents on July 1, 2022, with three years of structured, supervised training alongside highly qualified faculty and dedicated medical staff. By July 2024, Aiken Regional will have 18 Family Medicine Residents on staff and training year-round.

For more information about the Graduate Medical Education Program at Aiken Regional, visit aikengme.com.

RHS and ARMC

Rural Health Services is collaborating with ARMC to bring additional access to care for the Aiken community through the Family Medicine Residency Program.

The demand for high-quality primary care physicians continues to be a need throughout South Carolina. We are proactively responding to the anticipated need for primary care physicians by collaborating to increase the number of newly-graduated doctors entering residency in the Aiken community. The physicians will be working and training throughout the ARMC system, and the RHS’s Clyburn Center for Primary Care will serve as the outpatient clinic for the residents. The collaboration will not only increase the number of primary care physicians training locally but will also increase access for patients who struggle with poverty, a lack of health insurance, and other barriers to accessing healthcare.

In July of 2022, 6 residents will join the Adult and Family Medicine Department at RHS. Each resident is a licensed physician and is completing their three years of residency in our community. They care for patients of all ages and rotate through pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, and behavioral health.