Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center is preparing to host some new “residents” both physically and professionally.

The medical center announced Monday it has entered into a new medical residency program with The Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine. The program will bring resident physicians to the medical center to both work and live.

“When the program begins, the students will actually live at the hospital,” Memorial President and CEO Joseph Ruffolo said.

Smiling, Ruffolo added, “Hopefully it won’t become a frat house.”

LECOM, as the college is known, bills itself as the largest osteopathic medical college in the U.S. with campuses in Erie, Pa., Greensburg, Pa. and Bradenton, Fla. Beginning in January, qualified third- and fourth-year LECOM students will perform clinical rotations at the Falls Medical Center under the guidance of hospital affiliated physicians.

Those rotations will include internal medicine, surgery, OB/GYN, psychiatry, emergency medicine, ambulatory family practice, cardiology, nephrology, neurology, radiology and urology.

Besides treating patients at the medical center and the Hamilton B. Mizer Primary Care Center, family practice residents will utilize Memorial’s mobile clinic to provide care to migrant workers at nearby farms and will see patients at the Niagara University Health Clinic and Tuscarora Indian Reservation Health Center.

In addition to training resident physicians, Memorial will also serve as an affiliated teaching hospital and clinical training site for third- and fourth-year medical students from LECOM.

Dr. Dennis Agostini, associate dean of clinical education at LECOM, said many of its graduates go on to pursue careers as primary care physicians. Memorial has identified access to primary care and family practice physicians as the most pressing need in the Niagara Falls community.

Agostini also said residency programs are the best way to recruit young physicians to a community.

“The best way to recruit physicians (to an area) is to have them train there,” Agostini said. “Generally, (the new physicians) will stay within 50 miles of where they train.”

The medical center also announced its family practice residency program has been accredited by the American Osteopathic Association and will immediately begin interviewing physician applicants for admission to the three-year program in July 2010.

Dr. Melvin Dyster, who established the family practice residency program at Memorial in 1972, said the new residents will be a welcome addition to the hospital.

“If you talk to the attending doctors, I believe they’ll be happy to see (the new residents),” Dyster said. “It is with a glad heart and open arms we greet LECOM.”

Over the next three years, the program will grow to include four first-year, four second-year and four third-year residents.