GRASS VALLEY, Calif. June 12, 2026 – The wellbeing of a community is built on many factors, but strong healthcare access and high-quality primary care are vital to overall health. Rural communities around the state and around the nation are faced with healthcare accessibility challenges and Grass Valley, CA is no different. Reports of worsening primary care physician shortages show the seriousness of the situation and without action, patients in rural communities will be facing a reality where they may face longer wait times, increased travel distances, and delays in important care. The Sierra Nevada Family Medicine Residency Program was developed to address this growing need for rural physicians.
Dignity Health Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital, a member of CommonSpirit Health, and Chapa-De Indian Health partnered together to establish the residency program in rural Nevada County. Founded in 2023, the three-year program aims to enhance access to high-quality, comprehensive healthcare for rural communities by providing physician training in a rural healthcare setting.
As the first round of residents from the program are preparing to complete their training this summer, they are choosing to stay local as full-time physicians. Following three years of training under physicians in both hospital and clinic settings, Dr. Kelty White and Dr. Nick Sparr have built strong ties to the Grass Valley community. They are excited to continue their careers serving the community that has embraced them as residents and embraced the residency program.
Dr. Nick Sparr said the success of the program is due to the efforts of everyone involved, “It wasn’t just the physicians that we worked with that were really supportive of training residents, but also all the staff that we encountered; nursing staff, medical assistants, and administrators all seem to just buy in right away. I think that that’s fairly unique to this environment and to this community.”
Lisa Davies, CEO of Chapa-De Indian Health said that the residency program has been both a recruitment and retention tool, attracting physicians who want to work in rural communities and offering them avenues to achieve that goal.
“The priority of the program is to prepare physicians who want to practice in rural primary medicine with the tools and experience that they’re going to need to do that,” Davies said. “Practicing primary care in rural areas is a unique environment. Here at Chapa-De, they are not just one doctor on their own. We surround them with a whole team of people at all levels to set them up for success. And that’s a different kind of way of practicing medicine.”
A new analysis shows the value of training physicians in the regions and settings that they want to practice in. Physicians are more likely to continue their careers in the region where they trained, and the residency program was designed with this in mind. Dr. Scott Neeley, President and CEO of Dignity Health Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital stated, “This program is having success recruiting people that want to live and work in this environment, as opposed to people who want to live and work in an urban environment. Our match results completely attest to that with the high caliber of our matched candidates to-date.”
The Sierra Nevada Family Medicine Residency Program is a partnership between different health systems, offering comprehensive training that benefits participating residents and patients. Founding Program Director Dr. Glenn Gookin has seen tangible benefits from the program’s partnership model for patient care outcomes. He said, “With residents, myself, and other Chapa-De physicians directly interacting at the hospital through this partnership, we are lowering barriers for our patients. Examples are increased communication for them at the infusion center and diagnostic imaging with surgical procedures and with facilitation of transitions of care.”
For Dr. Kelty White, working in rural primary care was always the goal, and her experience in the residency program solidified her ambitions. “There is a lot of variety and opportunities for getting a wider breadth of practice areas in a rural location. Working with other physicians and specialists to come up with plans that meet individual patient needs is special, and I am looking forward to continuing that practice as a physician in this community.”
Dr. Kelty White will join Chapa-De Indian Health as a full-time primary care physician and Dr. Nick Sparr will split his time between Dignity Health Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital as a hospitalist and Chapa-De Indian Health as an on-call physician.
The Sierra Nevada Family Medicine Residency Program will welcome the fourth round of residents this summer, continuing to create a legacy of addressing the needs of rural communities through comprehensive, compassionate care.