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The Surgical Critical Care Fellowship Program, based at Ocala Regional Medical Center in Ocala, FL, has received initial accreditation and is seeking immediate applicants.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medicine Education (ACGME) approved the one-year program for two fellows per year. The program will be directed by Dr. Joshua Hagan who completed his residency in General Surgery, and fellowship in Surgical Critical Care at the University of Tennessee.

The new fellowship is part of the UCF College of Medicine-HCA Healthcare consortium, which has added 24 graduate medical education programs in Central and North Central Florida in the past four years. The partnership is now training over 360 residents in Gainesville, Ocala and greater Orlando and expects to add a total of 600 residency slots to the state by 2020.

"My goal is to promote high quality surgical and critical care to the patients we serve in the community and challenge our fellows to strive for clinical excellence and leadership in the field of Surgical Critical Care," stated Dr. Hagan.

Surgical Critical Care is the first fellowship, and seventh UCF-HCA program at Ocala Regional Medical Center, a 222-bed facility and Verified Level II Trauma Center by the American College of Surgeons. Ocala Regional Medical Center had 2803 trauma cases last year.

Ocala Regional Medical Center is accredited by the American College of Surgeons' Commission on Cancer, the Society of Chest Pain Centers, is designated as a Primary Stroke Center by the Joint Commission, and holds an accreditation by the American Society for Bariatric Surgery.

The medical center offers a variety of medical services including cardiac and vascular, emergency, neurological and rehabilitation, and bariatric surgery.

"We are committed to providing our community with quality healthcare and our growing Graduate Medical Education programs allow us to recruit, train and retain quality physicians," says Chad Christianson, Ocala Regional Medical Center's Chief Executive Officer, "This is outstanding news for our community, our physicians, and Graduate Medical Education as a whole."

Applications are now being accepted for the 2019-20 academic year. For more information, please contact Linda White at Linda.white5@hcahealthcare.com