Family Medicine Residency at IU Health Primary Care Central Indianapolis

The Family Medicine Residency at IU Health Primary Care Central Indianapolis is a three-year community-based training program that covers the full spectrum of family medicine and allows residents to explore special areas of interest. Residents participate in integrated inpatient and outpatient learning and receive training in six major areas of medicine: pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, internal medicine, psychiatry and neurology, surgery, and community medicine. Subspecialty training is available in sports medicine, obstetrics, practice management, geriatrics, hospital medicine, chronic pain opioid use disorder and other areas of medicine.

Family medicine residents are challenged to identify the preventive needs of patients, promote healthy lifestyles, provide ongoing routine care and emotional support, diagnose and treat acute and chronic illness, and work with consultants and other physician specialists to care for unusual and complex medical problems.

Being part of a large and nationally recognized medical school provides this family medicine residency program with distinct advantages, including access to a large and diverse patient population, vast resources for research, continuous quality-improvement projects, academic work of faculty, and a wide array of collaboration opportunities from both academic and community settings to facilitate resident growth.

Inclusive Excellence

IU School of Medicine values diversity and is committed to advancing culturally competent medical education, clinical care and research.

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Family Medicine Residency in Indianapolis

Find out more about IU School of Medicine’s Graduate Medical Education program, including stipends and benefits.

Office of GME

Message from the Program Director

Welcome to the Indiana University School of Medicine Family Medicine Residency program at IU Health Primary Care Central Indianapolis!

Like other family medicine programs, we seek to train competent compassionate family physicians who can adapt their practice to the needs of their communities. I hope that while we do that, our program can work alongside you to optimize your wellness while balancing it with the necessary rigor of the program. We strive to do this by including you in changes brought about by our continuous improvement processes and honoring the diverse experiences you bring with you to our program.

The Family Medicine Residency program has a wealth of resources thanks to being part of IU School of Medicine, our location in Indianapolis and our partnership with IU Health. We use these resources to tailor your educational experience to cover the breadth of family medicine while allowing a focus on your goals for future practice.

Our outpatient clinic setting was specifically designed to enhance team-based care and optimize access to the whole team, including our pharmacist, chaplain and social workers with occasional physical therapy and dental team members. You will spend time in clinic on virtually every rotation, with a graduated increase in number of clinics per week and number of patients per clinic over the course of your residency. We see a wide variety of patients, enabling our residents to learn about diseases as well as the impact of varied socioeconomic status, insurance types and ethnicity on patients. Our inpatient service is run by our core family medicine faculty. It is located at IU Health Methodist Hospital, a nationally ranked level one trauma center with an extensive patient population and opportunities to see a wide variety of conditions and complex levels of care. Specialty rotations take place at Methodist Hospital, the Richard L. Roudebush Indianapolis Veterans’ Administration Medical Center, Eskenazi Health Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital, IU Health West and IU Health North, giving our residents the chance to work alongside nationally recognized physicians from other specialties while learning evidence-based medicine from faculty who care about resident education. Nationally renowned Riley Hospital for Children hosts our inpatient pediatric and obstetrics rotations. Our obstetrics service is staffed by family medicine faculty, many of whom are C-section trained. We are a Centering Pregnancy site, allowing for group visits, more autonomy and better connection for our patients.

Our engaged faculty have a wide variety of interests, expertise and backgrounds. They work to provide excellent education, mentorship and support to our residents while also working to continuously re-evaluate and improve the residency program. Our faculty lead tracks and specialty clinics at the residency office encompassing LGBTQ+ health, pregnancy care, chronic pain and opioid use disorder, sports medicine, global health, geriatrics and lifestyle medicine. Our new department chair, Kola Okuyemi, MD, MPH, is a national leader in health equity research and our residents will be exposed to cutting edge research in this field.

Our didactic sessions occur weekly with an 18-month rotating curriculum. We have a new wellness curriculum that we are committed to living throughout the program as well as teaching in didactics.

As your program director, I prefer to lead with transparency and collaborative decision making, seeking all stakeholder input prior to final decisions whenever possible. I work closely with the associate program directors as we share knowledge and make decisions as a team. I am a proud graduate of this residency program with many years of experience practicing outside of academia in federally qualified health centers. I’m a big fan of Indianapolis and all it has to offer. My medical passion involves the care of chronic pain and opioid use disorder and I’ll talk your ear off about it if you let me.

Welcome to IU School of Medicine!

Carol L. Dellinger, MD

Assistant Professor of Clinical Family Medicine

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Clinical Facilities

The residency program is housed in community clinic that falls within a federally designated medically underserved area. The Family Medicine Residency at IU Health Primary Care Central Indianapolis is a thriving practice modeled on Patient Centered Medical Home principles, including patient satisfaction, population management, quality-marker tracking of populations and physicians, and a multi-disciplinary approach to patient care. The medical home office, behavioral health, pharmacy, social work, physician teams and a triage center work together to coordinate the best care for patients.

The inpatient service at IU Health Methodist Hospital meets the health care needs of a high disease-burden patient population. Methodist Hospital is one of three Level I trauma hospitals in Indianapolis. The obstetrics service based out of the new Maternity Tower at Riley Hospital exposes the residents to high risk and operative obstetrics. Our prenatal services offered both at the residency’s community clinic as well as an area federally qualified health center provides our residents a robust prenatal care experience.

Curriculum

The Family Medicine Residency at IU Health Primary Care Central Indianapolis provides comprehensive training in all aspects of family medicine to foster development in residents’ individual areas of interest. A hybrid curriculum includes a blend of traditional four-week block rotations, multi-subject longitudinal rotations, electives and other personalized educational opportunities, and a weekly educational seminar series. Sample training year schedules, rotation descriptions, and additional information about the seminar series and specialized tracks are available.

Compensation and Benefits

In addition to benefiting from excellent training, family medicine residents enjoy competitive educational support. PGY 1 residents receive a $10,000 stipend and up to $700 iPad reimbursement. PGY 2 and PGY 3 residents receive up to $5,000 in reimbursements for continuing medical education/travel support. All residents have 28 paid vacation/sick days. The program also provides all residents with five days of time away from clinical duties during winter holidays.

Employment Terms and Benefits

Additional Degree Offerings

Family medicine residents at IU School of Medicine can benefit from academic courses and degree programs to pursue specific interests and supplement their credentials with an additional degree during residency training.

Dual Degree Programs

Global Health (Certificate)

Masters in Public Health (MPH)

Masters in Health Administration (MHA)

Masters of Business Administration (MBA)

Medical Humanities Program (Certificate)

Subspecialty Training

Social workers and behaviorists work on site at the Family Medicine Residency at IU Health Primary Care Central Indianapolis. The Family Medicine Residency program features a longitudinal behavioral science curriculum, spanning all three years of the residency experience.

Residents complete a one-month rotation in a Level One Trauma Center with one of the best Emergency Medicine residencies in the United States. Highly rated education and clinical experience benefit residents who work alongside IU School of Medicine Emergency Medicine residents.

Unopposed (inpatient) experience is available with high-disease-burden, high-acuity patients that are directly compared on quality and cost parameters to hospitalist (non-residency) service. The inpatient service is comprised of four teams—each with a teaching faculty, upper-level resident and intern. This experience includes high-acuity patients and stand-alone service with three teams of two faculty as well as one week of each of the following in a given block: night float staffed by overnight faculty, flex team that takes admission in the morning staffed by faculty on-call, and two teams that alternate between taking admission in the afternoon and rounds on the service for the day with the assigned two faculty for the week.

For residents interested in geriatrics, trainees can work with a panel of nursing home patients. Opportunities are also available to work with the geriatrics fellowship faculty.

Opposed experience at the VA or a local county hospital is available as part of the Family Medicine Residency in conjunction with the Internal Medicine Residency in an all upper-level unit. Residents benefit from patient-care opportunities and teaching experience in a model designed for teaching residents.

Multiple international medical experience opportunities are available, including sponsored trips to China and opportunities for away electives to various Latin American destinations.

Family medicine residents participate in an unopposed Family Medicine obstetric (OB) service with family medicine faculty with operative privileges. Additional opportunities (unopposed) are available with a large midwife service to give residents opportunities to graduate with 80-100+ deliveries. While on the obstetric rotation, residents work with faculty credentialed for cesarean section and high-risk patients in a variety of outpatient environments and populations for pre-natal training, including Federally Qualified Health Centers. As part of the family medicine OB inpatient service with family medicine faculty obstetrics teachers, residents experience in-hospital water births and OB ultrasound training and have opportunities to assist family medicine faculty with D&C, cesarean section and tubal-ligation procedures.

Two unique rotations are available to family medicine residents with pediatric residents on a pediatric service at IU Health Riley Children’s Hospital on general pediatric wards. The exposure to a large volume and wide spectrum of disease processes as well as the hands-on nature of the experiences make the pediatric training available as part of the Family Medicine Residency especially competitive.

Residents will have the opportunity to become proficient in lacerations repair, joint injection and aspiration, nexplanon insertion and removal, IUD placement and removal, and skin biopsies. Additionally, residents may have the opportunity to perform paracentesis, central line placement, adult intubations, and arterial line placement.

Residents have the opportunity to participate in sporting events for local high schools, universities and professional organizations with sports medicine faculty. There are also opportunities to partner with faculty to sponsor teams.