ArticleJournal of general internal medicine2026
Rural Practice Made Attractive: A Scoping Review of Rural Primary Care Physician Recruitment and Retention Incentives.
Article in Journal of general internal medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Rural Health Curriculum in Bachelor of Science in Nursing Programs: A Narrative Review.The Journal of rural health : official journal of the American Rural Health Association and the National Rural Health Care Association · 2026Review
- From training to practice: a longitudinal study on the retention and career entry of young general practitioners in Czechia.BMC primary care · 2026Article
- Cultivating the Field of Rural Health Research: The Case for Rural Health Research Competencies.The Journal of rural health : official journal of the American Rural Health Association and the National Rural Health Care Association · 2026Article
- Why do family physicians stay in rural practice? National survey of Canadian primary care clinicians who have stayed or left.Canadian family physician Medecin de famille canadienArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundWorkforce development programs aim to address the disparity in the number of primary care physicians (PCPs) practicing in rural U.S. areas. Both publicly and privately funded rural recruitment and retention programs have worked for decades to enhance healthcare access. However, little is known about their comparative effectiveness in retaining PCPs long term. This scoping review assessed the success of programs in retaining rural PCPs.
methodsWe searched PubMed, Embase, and Health Business Elite for peer-reviewed literature, published between 2013 and 2023, focusing on PCPs' rural recruitment and retention in the U.S. The gray literature search included sources like the Rural Health Information Hub and the Rural Medical Training Collaborative, followed by a Google search. Articles were screened by two authors, with discrepancies resolved by a third.
resultsFrom 2227 articles identified, only 10 met the inclusion criteria, with 7 additional programs found through gray literature, totaling 17 programs. Financial incentives, such as state loan repayment programs (n = 2) and scholarships (n = 2), showed the highest reported retention rates (50-100%) in rural areas; however, these results should be interpreted cautiously due to small sample sizes and substantial variability in follow-up periods across programs. DISCUSSION: Most rural PCP workforce development programs did not report retention outcomes. Among those that did, financial incentive programs had higher retention rates than rural education and residency programs. These findings are limited by the heterogeneity of results reported and the variability in program sample sizes. Additionally, many education programs reported the number of clinicians in rural areas but did not specify whether they were in primary care. Future program reports and research should standardize reporting to include the number of individuals who completed the program, their specialty, duration of rural practice post service time commitment, and current practice status in rural areas.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.