The University of Texas System and Doctors Hospital at Renaissance will introduce their four residency program directors in Edinburg today, although most of the directors have been hard at work for months.

Dr. Amer Malas began in September last year and said he’s been working to have the internal medicine residency program accredited quickly. All programs are scheduled to begin enrolling their residents in 2015.

Prior to taking this position in the Rio Grande Valley, Malas was at St. Francis Hospital and Charleston Medical Associates in Charleston, W.Va. Before that he was a professor of medicine at the Gulf Medical University in the United Arab Emirates, according to information provided by the Doctors Hospital at Renaissance.

Malas has been preparing the curriculum and recruiting faculty, he said, adding that paperwork has already been submitted to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. His program is expected to enroll 24 residents.

All programs together are expected to enroll 78 residents.

Sofia Hernandez, vice president for governmental relations and medical education, said three of the four residency programs have completed accreditation applications. Hernandez said she expects all programs to be accredited by the fall.

She said it’s been a giant task getting four programs running at the same time, but the rewards will be even bigger.

This is the hospital’s first initiative to become a teaching hospital. Hernandez said it just made sense.

“When you look at the population growth in the Rio Grande Valley, you look at the physician shortage,” Hernandez said. “When you do the math, it just makes sense that we would start working on creating that next generation of physicians.”

Dr. Eron G. Manusov, program director for the family medicine residency program, said his personal mission has always been to care for the underserved and to decrease treatment disparities. Before beginning in December, Manusov was program director at Duke University’s Southern Region-Area Health Education Center Family Medicine Residency in Fayetteville, N.C.

This isn’t the first time Manusov has been in the Valley, he said. He previously worked at Florida State University’s College of Medicine and traveled to some of South Texas’s colonias, where he said he saw the need for improved health care.

A current lack of residency programs in the region forces many medical students to leave the state, he said.

“We know statistically that a resident will stay within 100 miles of their residency,” Manusov said. “If you have a residency in California and you’re from Texas, it’s more likely you will stay in California.”

That’s a trend that Manusov and his fellow program directors take into account.

“Many people from this region go out and go to medical school elsewhere. I think we have a good opportunity to bring some of those people back,” said Dr. John Michael Breen, program director for the obstetrics and gynecology residency program.

Breen previously served as program director and chairman of the ob/gyn program at Exempla Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver.

Breen said he could not pass up the opportunity to establish a new residency program.

“How often do you get to start a program from scratch?” Breen asked. “People are excited, and there’s a need down here.”

Breen began his position at the beginning of March. He will begin to work on the accreditation process and has about a month before deadline, he said.

It’s likely that the four residency programs will work together, he said.

“They’ll intersect 100 percent,” Breen said. “That’s what makes a residency program work.”

Like Breen, Dr. Charles Richart, program director for the general surgery residency program, said establishing a new program is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“All people in education dream and aspire to have the opportunity to develop and mold a program, but rarely does the opportunity present itself,” Richart said in an email.

According to DHR, Richart joined the University of Kansas Medical Center in 2010. Prior to that, he was a surgical faculty member at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

The four residency programs are a partnership between DHR and the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, but they will shift to the UTRGV when it becomes accredited, said Dr. Kenneth Shine, special adviser to the UT System chancellor. The School of Medicine is a separate effort from the residency programs, Shine said, but it was important to increase the number of residency spots for students who eventually graduate from the medical school.

These spots will increase the number of residencies from 33 to more than 140 and will include posts in Brownsville and Harlingen hospitals. The conversation to increase these positions began almost three years ago, Shine said.

“We talked to the hospitals in the region, and Doctor’s Hospital indicated they would like to establish these residencies,” Shine said. “This is a major step forward. When we have the medical school and we graduate 50 students a year, we need to have enough first-year positions so those who want to stay in the Valley can stay here.”

It might be a challenge for new programs to attract applicants at first. That’s something most of the directors agreed with, but it’s a challenge that Shine says can be easily overcome.

“Let’s put it this way: We had a large number of very qualified candidates to head the programs, and I think that’s a sign that people are going to see these programs as being very attractive and that they will be quite attractive to students,” Shine said.