Randy Munson handles physician recruitment for our office and manages the New Physicians of Wisconsin Program. He's been working to recruit and place primary care physicians all over Wisconsin for more than 25 years, for several years with UW-Health and private recruitment firm Caswell-Winters & Associates, and for more than twenty years after that with our office. 

Randy also serves as the Treasurer of the professional organization Wisconsin Staff Physician Recruiters (WSPR).  As his retirement from both our office and WSPR nears, he was recognized for his several decades of service to WSPR at a meeting on Thursday. 
 

Randy's first WSPR meeting was around 1992, and he's helped new recruiters in the organization find their bearings over the past twenty-five years. He certainly seemed at home, cracking jokes and in good spirits with many of his fellow recruiters. "Randy's been fantastic. He's been a great mentor to people," said Dolly Willelms, of Prevea Health. 
 

Anneliese Pratt, a recruiter for Ascension Wisconsin, will become the organization's new treasurer.  
 

Congratulations, Randy! 

An assessment study from the Wisconsin Policy Forum finds significant behavioral health shortages in rural areas.
 

Using data from the Wisconsin Medical Society, the study finds that many of Wisconsin's counties meet both the state and federal standards for behavioral health shortages. Fifty-five Wisconsin counties meet the the state standard for a "shortage," which is defined as fewer than one psychiatrist for every 10,000 people. And more than half of Wisconsin's counties meet the federal standard for a shortage, which is fewer than one psychiatrist per 30,000 residents.
 

Exacerbating the shortage is the fact that the state's psychiatrist workforce is aging rapidly. The average Wisconsin psychiatrist is 50 years old, meaning that rural psychiatrists ought to be in training now, in order to serve underserved areas in the decades to come. 
 

According to Mental Health America, Wisconsin is ranked 41st out of 50 states for prevalence of mental illness. And a 2017 Department of Health Services report finds that over half of the population that is in need of mental health disorder services isn't being served.
 

Some initiatives aim at recruiting psychiatrists and other physicians to underserved areas. Loan assistance programs from our office are available to Wisconsin psychiatrists. Other initiatives include increasing the number of residency programs in underserved areas, expanding the use of integrated care models, and telemedicine.