The Legislature recognizes that there is a need to upgrade the availability of health care services for people of Oklahoma, and thus, there is a need to improve the balance of physician manpower distribution in the state both by type of practice and by geographic location. Furthermore, the Legislature recognizes the need to accomodate the increasing number of graduates from the medical and osteopathic colleges of Oklahoma by retaining their services as practicing physicians in the state and by attracting graduates from schools outside the state. Therefore, it is the intent of the Legislature to increase the number of internship and residency programs offered for the training of physicians throughout the state through the sharing by the state of the costs of such internships and residencies with hospitals and other clinical residency training establishments. These programs shall be designed primarily to emphasize the training of primary health care and family practice physicians and to develop manpower programs to service directly the rural and nonmetropolitan areas of the state.
Laws 1975, c. 271, § 1, emerg. eff. June 5, 1975.