opinion

Bill puts UW's ob-gyn program at risk

If you are a woman living in Wisconsin, you probably don’t think much about how your obstetrics/gynecology physician was trained; you just expect that he or she has completed a rigorous educational program in med school and then in residency training.

We’re proud to say that the University of Wisconsin-Madison ob-gyn residency training program is one of the best in the nation. Every year, it produces a well-trained corps of doctors to take care of women’s health needs. We are in Wisconsin because of its outstanding educational value.

But, as ob-gyn residents who are currently training at UW, we are deeply concerned that this stellar program will end — because of proposed legislation introduced by State Rep. Andre Jacque and State Sen. Chris Kapenga.

This legislation (Assembly Bill 206 and Senate Bill 154) would eliminate the UW’s ability to offer ob-gyn residents training in abortion services as required by the national accrediting body, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Residents can opt out of the training but the sponsoring institution must offer it.

Specifically, the legislation prohibits employees of the University of Wisconsin (including UW Health) from performing both therapeutic and elective abortions, providing health care services in any setting where abortions are provided, or training others in performing abortions. If this legislation becomes law in Wisconsin, our national accrediting body will deem our program noncompliant with its core standards and likely strip it of its accreditation. That means residents will leave — no one will want to stay with an unaccredited program.

And that will reverse the positive impact of our training program on Wisconsin. In the last 20 years, nearly 40% of UW Health ob-gyn residents have stayed here after completing their training to care for women’s health care needs. Wisconsin is just like the rest of the nation in that there is a shortage of physicians available to treat patients, especially ob-gyn doctors. In Wisconsin, 29 of the state’s 72 counties have only one ob-gyn or none at all, according to the American Medical Association; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists anticipates a national shortage of more than 20,000 ob-gyn's by 2050.

As physicians retire, patients will find it increasingly difficult to get timely medical care if there is not a steady stream of new docs. The ob-gyn residency program at UW is a source of care for women and babies today and into the future, but the misguided legislation proposed by Jacque and Kapenga will bring that care to a halt and will reduce the number of ob-gyn's trained in Wisconsin by more than one-third.

Right now, ob-gyn residents provide a broad range of high-quality care to women from all walks of life. In its most recent innovation, UW created the first rural residency program in the nation designed to train ob-gyn's to provide high-quality, specialty care for women in rural communities, including Watertown, Monroe, Ripon and Waupun. This program has become a model for programs in other states.

Originally from Florida and Oregon, we are proud to live and work in Wisconsin. We are developing skills to treat pregnant women, those with gynecological cancers and pelvic-floor disorders. If our program loses its accreditation, we will be forced to complete our residency training elsewhere. That’s right — we will be forced to leave Wisconsin, and we anticipate our fellow residents, and department faculty for that matter, will follow suit.

We hope it doesn’t come to that. Lawmakers should consider the far-reaching implications of this legislation when they resume taking votes next year.

Sierra M. Jansen is a second-year obstetrics/gynecology resident at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health; Ross Harrison is a fourth-year resident in the same program.