A new round of funding for physician training is aimed at increasing the number of Hawaii jobs in the medical field.

At the end of June, Gov. Linda Lingle awarded $140,000 to the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine. The funding will be used for the Hawaii Island Family Health Center residency training program in an effort to provide more physicians on the Big Island, thus relieving a statewide physician shortage that has hit rural areas hard.

"It's incredibly good news," Sen. Josh Green, a Big Island emergency physician and medical director of organizational development for the Hawaii Independent Physicians Association, told the Hawaii Star-Advertiser.

Newly-graduated medical doctors and residents in the Big Island residency training program spend three years in family practice training under the medical school's Department of Family Practice and Community Health. The school has a goal of graduating four family medicine specialists each year.

TriWest Healthcare Alliance plans to match the state's funding with $500,000 a year for five years for an interdisciplinary training program for medical residents, nurse practitioners, and undergraduates. That matching program could later be expanded to other sites, such as Wahiawa General Hospital.

A recent workforce assessment completed by two medical school doctors found that Big Island has 38 percent fewer doctors than necessary. As a whole, Hawaii is lacking about 500 doctors in nearly all specialties. And 41 percent of the state's doctors will be 65 during the next 10 years, which could result in the loss of 134 physicians per year to retirement.

The biggest needs are for primary care doctors, cardiologists, anesthesiologists, diagnostic radiologists, gastroenterologists, internists, general surgeons and infectious disease specialists.