Doctor Michael Medich demonstrates procedure on medical dummy lying on a gurney to two medical students, all three wearing white lab coats

One Wisconsin. On Wisconsin.

UW–Madison medical training program improves health care for rural communities

Story by Will Cushman. Photos by Bryce Richter.

Having grown up in a small town in northern Minnesota, Dr. Mike Medich knows all too well how difficult it can be to receive prompt, quality health care when you live in the countryside, or anywhere outside of a large metro area.

“We had physicians in town, but sometimes depending on the medical problem, we had to go to a bigger city, and the closest one for us was about an hour away in Duluth,” says Medich, who now directs medical education at Aurora BayCare Medical Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Unfortunately, access to health care has only gotten worse for most rural communities in the United States since Medich’s childhood. The University of Wisconsin–Madison and its partners are tackling the pressing problem by bringing medical students out of the city and into rural hospitals and clinics around the state.

Reimagining the pipeline from med school to rural practice

The Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine (WARM), part of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, is at the leading edge of reimagining the pipeline from medical school to rural practice. WARM allows students with a demonstrated commitment to rural medicine to relocate for 28 months of their training to academic campuses in northeast, central and western Wisconsin. There, they receive hands-on training, often across a wider breadth of primary care specialties than they might experience in a traditional setting on a large medical campus.

The benefit is mutual, says Medich, who is the regional program director for WARM at Aurora BayCare, which operates clinics throughout northeast Wisconsin, from Marinette to Sturgeon Bay to Howards Grove.

“We don’t have residents or fellows in medical training at any of our facilities, so the students are working one-on-one with the attending physician and not uncommonly they’re also asked to serve as a first assistant in surgery and deliver babies,” says Medich. “And for the patients, the students are able to provide more personal care than a busy physician might be able to, and the patients appreciate that.”

Michael Medich and Joseph Holt have a conversation sitting in two red Terrace chairs in the middle of a skybridge at the Aurora Baycare Medical Center in Green Bay. — Dr. Mike Medich (left), who directs medical education at Aurora BayCare Medical Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin, talks with Dr. Joe Holt, WARM program director at UW–Madison, about the benefits of the program.

The lasting benefit for rural patients, though, is WARM’s track record for graduating medical students who end up returning to rural communities to practice full time. Only about 6 to 10% of graduates from traditional medical programs go on to practice in rural settings, while about half of the 331 WARM graduates to-date have settled in rural communities.

“We have students who finish training and then return to practice in a community or town that hasn’t had a doctor in a decade,” says Dr. Joe Holt, director of WARM. “We’ve got graduates working in critical access hospitals that would close if they weren’t there.”

Training doctors for rural care

Holt is a physician at University Hospital in Madison but previously practiced for more than a decade in Rusk County in northern Wisconsin, a period he remembers fondly. Now, he’s helping to train new generations of medical students who have all sorts of motivations for practicing in small communities, whether it’s because they want a rural lifestyle, feel called to fill a critical role or are attracted to the variety that rural practice provides.

“WARM provides students with really extensive training and experiences that are pertinent to doctors who practice in rural areas,” says Holt. “A doctor in a hospital in Madison sees all sorts of complex cases but may have dozens of consultants and other support services available. In rural areas, a physician needs to be able to deal with anything that walks through the door, and so our students need to be really well prepared with a lot of direct and hands-on experience.”

This preparation can lead medical students down unexpected paths and specialties they may not have considered. Holt says that while primary care is a critical need across all of rural Wisconsin, all specialties are needed, so the WARM program accepts students interested in pursuing any area. In recent years, WARM students at Aurora BayCare have gone on to specialize in family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, general surgery and psychiatry among others.

“Wisconsin needs all forms of specialty care,” says Holt. “So when a student comes to us, whatever their future path is going to bring, we support that.”

Shane Hoffman smiling in the hallway of a medical facility — The latest class of WARM students graduated in May 2025. Shane Hoffman hopes to work in a clinic or hospital in northern Wisconsin. Read Shane’s story »

Learn more about UW-Madison’s impact on Wisconsin and your community

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Pedestrians and students walk among the colors of the fall leaves near Bascom Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during autumn on November 11, 2021. (Photo by Bryce Richter / UW-Madison)

UW–Madison medical training program improves health care for rural communities

Reimagining the pipeline from med school to rural practice

Training doctors for rural care

Learn more about UW-Madison’s impact on Wisconsin and your community

Learn more about UW partnerships with communities across Wisconsin

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