Neosho, MO. – The inaugural graduating class of Freeman Health System’s Family Medicine Residency Program was celebrated last week for their hard work and dedication to their Neosho patients.

It was a moment Freeman Neosho Hospital Chief Executive Officer Renee Denton described as a “truly momentous occasion.”

The guests of honor – the three Neosho-based physicians first welcomed into the program Freeman operates in affiliation with Kansas City University of Medicine in 2022 – were Dr. Terrence Kelly and Dr. Omar Rehman. Dr. Andrea Pelate, who has devoted half of her clinical time this year to the Neosho clinic, was also honored.

“It’s really important that we make sure the Neosho community truly understands what we have here in Neosho,” Denton said during a reception hosted by the Neosho Area Chamber of Commerce. “In rural communities, it is extremely challenging to recruit physicians and to ensure exceptional care. To be able to have a family medicine residency program right here in our city is truly something special.”

The goal behind the Neosho-based Freeman Rural Family Medicine Residency Clinic, which provides care for the entire family through every stage of life, is to train and ultimately retain physicians in the Joplin metro area, Denton said. To that end, she was proud to announce that Dr. Pelate will continue to serve her rural patients as Neosho’s newest family medicine doctor. Dr. Kelly will work as a hospitalist at Freeman Hospital West in Joplin. Dr. Rehman will be working in urgent care. 

“I can tell you that we could not have possibly had better candidates to represent our first class,” Denton said.

Each year, the Family Medicine Residency Program adds five new resident physicians, two of whom serve three-year clinical stints at the Freeman Rural Family Medicine Residency Clinic, which provides care for the entire family through every stage of life.

Dr. Barbara Miller, physician program director for Freeman, led the team which created the Family Medicine Residency Program in late 2019.

“It is not easy to be the first of anything, and these residents really came here on a promise without a track record and have really embraced and really created a tradition of what family medicine can be in these communities,” Dr. Miller said.

“I could come up with a rap sheet of how many patient encounters they’ve seen, how many toenails they’ve excised and all of that, but I think the legacy they are leaving really has to do with the heart of family medicine, which is really believing that access to care is important, that developing relationships with patients are important, that providing high quality, evidence-based care is important,” Dr. Miller continued. “They have embodied that in every way that I could have ever asked them to.”

It's important as a community, she concluded, “to acknowledge what they’ve done.”

Freeman Health System’s President and Chief Executive Officer Matt Fry was on-hand to wish the trio good luck.

“Thank you for being the first; thank you for investing so much time and energy into this program and into this community,” Fry said. “Our health system is better off for it.”