Corpus Christi medical leaders weigh in on doctor shortage solutions
Caller-Times: Photos of March
A look back at Caller-Times photographs from around the Coastal Bend and beyond in March 2025.
- Corpus Christi faces a physician shortage, prompting local leaders to explore solutions for recruitment and retention.
- Strategies include investing in graduate medical education programs and seeking state funding for recruitment incentives.
Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series about a shortage of doctors in the Corpus Christi area and potential solutions to recruit and retain them. Read part one here.
As many areas of the U.S. grapple with physician shortages, local health care leaders must figure out how to get doctors to come to Corpus Christi.
So far, that has included investing in graduate medical education and hoping that if hospital systems can manage to bring doctors to Corpus Christi, they’ll want to stay.
As the Caller-Times has examined health care needs in the Coastal Bend, the consensus is clear: There aren’t enough doctors in Corpus Christi.
Here, the Caller-Times is taking a look at potential solutions: strategies that are currently in the works, including a bid for state support by the Nueces County Hospital District, and more remote hopes such as the idea of a local medical school.
In early 2024, the Nueces County Medical Society released a survey of members focused on physician needs. Of the local doctors who responded, 40.5% said they plan to retire within the next five years. More than half of the respondents said they were actively recruiting new providers without much success.
“There is a shortage of workforce in the community, and the community is facing difficulty attracting and recruiting physicians,” Nueces County Medical Society President Dr. Karl Serrao said.
The survey reveals how local doctors feel about Corpus Christi and the challenges they face in the medical field. Survey respondents said that possible recruits who decided to practice elsewhere gave reasons such as wanting to live in a bigger city as well as perceptions about the area.
“One of the biggest reasons folks do not stay or aren’t attracted here has to do with … the job opportunities for their spouses and partners,” Serrao said. “The availability of other amenities, quality of life, entertainment, shopping, restaurants tend to be one of the big reasons.”
However, people who train in Corpus Christi often want to stay, and physicians who grew up in the area want to come back, Serrao said.
To really have an impact, it will take multiple solutions, Serrao said, from establishing more education and training programs in Corpus Christi to helping doctors repay student loans.
Graduate medical education: keeping them here
It takes a while to become a doctor. After earning a bachelor’s degree, which typically takes four years, future doctors have to go to medical school. That’s another four years of school, but that’s not where the process ends.
Next comes residency, a stage of graduate medical education when doctors continue further training in the area of medicine they plan to practice. That can take another three to seven years.
“If we don’t have a place for those students to train once they graduate, they will leave the state,” said Todd Senters, HCA Gulf Coast vice president of graduate medical education and designated institutional official.
HCA Healthcare operates Corpus Christi Medical Center.
Senters said that most medical students who have to leave the state for residency programs will not come back once they are finished to practice medicine.
There are several graduate medical education programs in Corpus Christi, with 48 pediatric residents at Driscoll Children’s Hospital; 40 family medicine resident physicians and 36 emergency medicine residents at Christus Spohn; and 18 internal medicine residents, three cardiology fellows and six pulmonary critical care fellows at Corpus Christi Medical Center.
These residents come from all over the country.
Upon completion of a residency, doctors can continue their education with a fellowship, a necessary step if they want to become an expert in a subspecialty. But pursuing a fellowship often means leaving the place where they completed their residency.
Corpus Christi Medical Center plans to add an additional residency or fellowship program, Senters said.
“Our No. 1 focus has to be on training quality physicians for our community,” Senters said.
Current doctor recruitment efforts
Dr. Mary Dale Peterson, the executive vice president and chief operating officer of Driscoll Health System, said that about 40% of Driscoll’s residents leave for fellowships. For the doctors who want to stay in South Texas and start practicing immediately after residency, as well as for fellowship-trained doctors who want to come back, Driscoll Children’s Hospital seeks to help them find jobs, even helping them start their own practice.
Christus Spohn Health System President and CEO Dominic Dominguez said that part of retaining Christus Spohn’s residents once they complete the program is making sure they know the health system wants them to stay and considering the needs of the doctors’ families.
To recruit doctors to Corpus Christi, local hospitals try to meet every need a job candidate might have, including trying to help doctors’ spouses find jobs, talking about local schools and child care for their children and introducing candidates to real estate agents.
“All of those things play into the equation of whether we can get somebody to actually sign a contract,” Peterson said, along with offering a competitive compensation package.
Though doctors from outside the community might have perceptions about it, getting them to visit and see Corpus Christi for themselves can be important. It’s a coastal city with unique outdoor spaces, a strong local medical society to promote camaraderie and a good place to raise children, Peterson said.
“Once we physically bring them down here, we’re usually able to close the deal, I would say, about 30% of the time, which I think is pretty good,” Peterson said.
The medical community needs to work with community leaders who can help ensure that there are job opportunities for doctors’ spouses in professional fields and continue to develop Corpus Christi as a livable, attractive city, Peterson said.
“We certainly promote things like our symphony, like our Hooks baseball team, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi,” Dominguez said. “We’ve got the most beautiful seashore around. We utilize all the community assets.”
Does Corpus Christi need a medical school?
Some in the community are raising the question: Why doesn’t Corpus Christi have a medical school?
“Corpus Christi is one of the largest cities in Texas that does not have a medical school,” Peterson said.
Over the past several years, new medical schools have opened in Texas. But not in Corpus Christi.
Medical schools bring faculty doctors to the community as well as state funding that can help support the medical community, Peterson said. They also create a pipeline for doctor residency programs.
“I think it’s time that we have that conversation,” Peterson said. “We have other medical schools that have started in Texas with communities with significantly smaller populations than Corpus Christi.”
There are medical schools in cities like Edinburg, Tyler and Lubbock.
Dominguez said that Christus Spohn has a relationship with Texas A&M College of Medicine, hosting medical students in hospitals in rural communities and Corpus Christi during an elective rotation.
Dominguez said he believes it will be easier to attract those students once they are doctors because they’ve already experienced Corpus Christi and other Coastal Bend communities.
Establishing a medical school locally is a welcome goal but would be a lengthy process, Dominguez said.
New medical schools don’t just pop up on their own.
If a university system decides to pursue a Coastal Bend medical school, the effort would require funding, state support and eventually accreditation.
“It takes a considerable amount of financial sources to operate a medical school,” Senters said. “The training equipment is quite expensive; the classroom environment is very expensive.”
But there is a recognized need for more medical education in Texas, Senters said.
Can the Nueces County Hospital District step in?
The Nueces County Hospital District is currently seeking state support and funding for local doctor recruitment efforts.
The hospital district was instrumental in saving Christus Spohn’s emergency medicine residency program, offering the funding to continue the program when Christus Spohn announced it planned to end emergency medicine residency training.
Now the hospital district wants state authorization for it to administer a grant program, working with hospitals to recruit and retain doctors. This would include creating incentives for doctors.
Bills filed by Coastal Bend lawmakers Rep. Denise Villalobos and Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa to establish the grant program have been assigned to committees in the Texas Legislature but have not been scheduled for hearings as of April 16.
State and county support is important, as are national funding sources for graduate medical education, Dominguez said, but he added that Christus Spohn’s commitment to the community and retaining physicians is “unwavering” regardless.
Other health care workforce needs
Though the need for more doctors has been a hot topic in Corpus Christi, there are other health care professions the community needs to attract and retain, hospital leaders say.
Examples include nurses and nurse practitioners, physician assistants, respiratory technicians, X-ray technicians and more, Peterson said.
“I think young people should get the message, there’s a lot of opportunity for them if they continue their education,” Peterson said.
But in these areas, local education partners such as Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi’s College of Nursing and Health Science and Del Mar College exist to train local students to meet local needs.
“They do an amazing, amazing job,” Dominguez said.
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