{"id":5452,"date":"2012-03-21T14:07:45","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T19:07:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=5452"},"modified":"2012-12-20T10:05:30","modified_gmt":"2012-12-20T16:05:30","slug":"oklahoma-wants-what-texas-offers-rural-doctors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2012\/03\/21\/oklahoma-wants-what-texas-offers-rural-doctors\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma Wants What Texas Offers Rural Doctors"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5453\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"Bob Abernathy is one of two doctors in Washita County, Oklahoma.\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2012\/03\/dr-abernathy2.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5453\" title=\"Doctor Robert Abernathy\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2012\/03\/dr-abernathy2-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Joe Wertz \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bob Abernathy is one of two doctors in Washita County, Oklahoma.<\/p>\n<\/div><p>There\u2019s another complication in Oklahoma\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2012\/03\/01\/the-cause-and-cure-of-oklahomas-doctor-deficiency-might-be-money\/\">quest<\/a> for more rural doctors: competition with Texas.<\/p><p>Through the Physician Manpower Training Commission, the state funds scholarships, stipends and loan aid to incentivize young medical students and residents to work in rural practices.<\/p><p>Usually, the OK vs. Texas <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2011\/10\/07\/oklahoma-vs-texas-a-red-river-rivalry-of-taxes\/\">rivalry<\/a> is about state government doing \u2014 regulating, taxing \u2014 less, but our southern neighbor\u2019s state-funded incentives for rural doctors are more than twice those offered in Oklahoma, KOSU\u2019s Ben Allen <a href=\"http:\/\/kosu.org\/2012\/03\/another-rivalry-with-texas\/\">reports<\/a>.<\/p><p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div><p>The per-hour billing rate of most physicians declines as you drive north from Dallas, Allen reports, but Texas is also way ahead of Oklahoma when it comes to indirect spending on rural health.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote><p>Our neighbors to the south forgive $160,000 if you practice medicine in a rural area. For Oklahoma, you\u2019re looking at only $60,000 in scholarships.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>Oklahoma has tried to keep up. A similar loan repayment program was created last year, but it went unfunded. Oklahoma&#8217;s physician training commission has now turned to fund the incentives with money from the state&#8217;s tobacco settlement fund, Allen reports.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230; they\u2019ll pay back the same amount of loans as Texas<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s another complication in Oklahoma\u2019s quest for more rural doctors: competition with Texas.Through the Physician Manpower Training Commission, the state funds scholarships, stipends and loan aid to incentivize young medical students and residents to work in rural practices.Usually, the OK vs. Texas rivalry is about state government doing \u2014 regulating, taxing \u2014 less, but our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":5453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[492,16,300,15],"tags":[857,323,322],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5452"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5464,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452\/revisions\/5464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}