San Ysidro Health Program

Program Identity & Fit

San Ysidro Health is an FQHC-based, community health center-anchored Internal Medicine residency built explicitly around a Patient Centered Medical Home model, designed to produce internists who remain in underserved community practice serving immigrants, refugees, the uninsured, elderly, and HIV/AIDS populations across San Diego County. Inpatient training occurs through a partnership with Scripps Mercy Chula Vista and San Diego, while continuity clinic runs longitudinally across all three years at San Ysidro Health sites and PACE programs, reflecting a deliberate outpatient-heavy, primary-care-first structure layered onto a traditional hospitalist framework. Research is structured but modest in scope, consisting of a required longitudinal quality-improvement or clinical research project (topic selection, IRB, data collection, abstract) rather than a lab-driven or grant-funded enterprise, supplemented by Medical Spanish and POCUS/simulation training that signal a hands-on, community-facing skill set. Graduate outcomes are mixed but weighted toward community internal medicine and hospitalist roles, with a meaningful minority pursuing fellowship (nephrology, cardiology, sleep, critical care, palliative), indicating the program values mission-aligned, community-service-oriented residents as much as academic markers.