Our namesake founder gave us the Wright start

Our namesake founder gave us the Wright start

The Wright Center was founded in 1976 as the Scranton-Temple Residency Program. Pioneering physician Dr. Robert E. Wright, a native of Archbald, Pennsylvania, led the startup and rallied community support. Dr. Wright and other early proponents of the physician training program were especially interested in developing doctors who would choose to practice locally. These community leaders foresaw the coming challenge in filling the slots of retiring physicians in Northeast Pennsylvania.

The residency program welcomed its first students on July 1, 1977. Its inaugural class consisted of six internal medicine physicians. In the decades since then, the program has blossomed into one of the largest U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)-funded Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education Safety Net Consortiums in the nation. In 2010, the Scranton-Temple Residency Program’s board of directors voted to rename the organization in Dr. Wright’s honor. Read more about Dr. Wright and his still-unfolding legacy.

Training doctors, healing patients

In the nearly 50 years since its founding, The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education has grown in size and scope to reflect the community’s – and the nation’s – evolving needs. It now trains hundreds of resident and fellow physicians each academic year. All of its residency and fellowship programs are accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Learn about the programs.

The Wright Center’s learners train in hospitals and community-based settings, including the health centers operated by The Wright Center for Community Health. The organization is community-owned and patient-governed. It serves tens of thousands of patients annually, providing access to comprehensive primary and preventive care for individuals of all ages. Learn about our whole-person primary health services.

Training doctors, healing patients
Growing our community impact

Growing our community impact

Today, The Wright Center nonprofit enterprise is a mission-driven organization with more than 650 employees. Its humble origins remain a point of pride. However, it increasingly is active far beyond Greater Scranton, advocating at the state and national levels for needed improvements to both the U.S. medical education system and health care delivery system.

In 2019, HRSA designated The Wright Center as a Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike. This designation has allowed The Wright Center to access federal resources and expertise so that it can better meet community needs. It continues to expand access to affordable, nondiscriminatory, high-quality health care to the region’s residents, including those from rural and other medically underserved areas.

The Wright Center has health centers in Lackawanna, Luzerne, Wayne, and Wyoming counties. Its integrated care model offers patients the convenience of going to a single site to receive medical, dental, and behavioral health care, including addiction treatment and recovery support services for opioid and substance use disorders.

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, The Wright Center acquired a mobile medical vehicle called Driving Better Health. A care team uses the vehicle to extend primary and preventive services, such as immunizations, to historically marginalized and hard-to-reach populations, meeting patients where they live and work.

The Wright Center provides care to all patients regardless of income level or whether they are underinsured or uninsured. No patient is turned away due to an inability to pay. Eligible individuals may qualify, based on family size and income, for a sliding-fee discount program.

The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement, a subsidiary of The Wright Center for Community Health, was formalized in the 2020s. It focuses on expanding access to care and addressing the socioeconomic determinants of health – including food insecurity, homelessness and poverty – that can adversely affect underserved patients.

The Wright Center’s complementary organizations all are working in tandem to fulfill the enterprise’s mission. Read more about its mission, values, and a bold 10-year vision.