Lee Health and FSU Launch Southwest Florida’s First OB/GYN Residency Program

Lee Health and Florida State University are beginning their first OB/GYN residency program at Cape Coral Hospital with the goal of expanding women's health services and alleviating physician workforce shortages across Southwest Florida. This program is expected to begin in the summer of 2026 with six residents onboarding each year for the next six years.

The program is needed because Cape Coral is growing quickly and now has an estimated 225,000 residents, and has now ranked fifth as one of the biggest boomtowns in America. Cape Coral Hospital currently delivers five to 10 babies daily, making the expansion of maternal and women's health services increasingly vital.

"We are thrilled to grow and expand our residency program to include OBGYN medicine. This will help increase our services and provide more access to care for the Southwest Florida community," said Chief Physician Executive of the Women's Health Institute, Dr. Cherrie Morris.

"I am thrilled to lead this new program at Lee Health and empower the next generation of OBGYN physicians," said Dr. Carrie Johnson, Program Director Physician of OBGYN Residency.

Residents will be trained to provide full reproductive health care, including pregnancy, labor and delivery, postpartum recovery, gynecologic surgery, and advanced gynecologic surgical procedures. Final resident selection will be complete at the end of Match Day in March 2026.

The new OB/GYN residency builds on Lee Health's existing educational programs, including family medicine, launched in 2012, and internal medicine, launched in 2022.

"Our continued partnership with Lee Health is essential in our efforts to build high quality residency programs that promote academic excellence, drive enhanced quality of care and address the critical physician workforce needs of our Florida communities," said William C. Boyer, DHSc, associate dean for Graduate Medical Education and the Designated Institutional Official for all sponsored GME programs at the College of Medicine.

This program also aims to combat the national shortage of OB/GYN specialists by training physicians locally, potentially increasing access to women's health services throughout the region.

"As we see our population rapidly continue to grow, we want to ensure all patients receive the high-quality care they've come to expect from Lee Health, and training the future doctors in our community is an important part of that mission."