HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The Billings Clinic Foundation is seeking to raise $3.3 million to keep Montana’s brand-new psychiatry residency program going once a grant covering its first three years of operations ends.
Billings Clinic officials said Monday that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Montana started the drive with a $250,000 donation to the program that launched in September as a regional track of the University of Washington Psychiatry Residency Training Program.
Montana had been one of three states, along with Alaska and Wyoming, without a psychiatry residency program. Officials say the need is great in Montana, which consistently has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation.
Billings Clinic says 400 people have applied for the program’s first class, which will begin next summer in Seattle. Residents are expected to arrive in Billings in 2021.