America’s Physician Crisis
MAAZ GUL – It has become common knowledge that despite being one of the most advanced countries in the world, America has a huge physician shortage. By 2030, the AAMC (American Association of Medical Colleges) predicts that we will be short about 120,000 doctors who are needed to provide adequate medical care for our country.
But what is even more disturbing is that more Americans than ever are wanting to become physicians. In 2007, 42,315 people applied for US medical schools and in 2018 that number rose to 52,777. However, despite this, the number of matriculants only rose by 3,863 even though the number of applicants went up by over 10,000.
Clearly, medical school is becoming more competitive, but if there is such a need for physicians that it be declared a crisis, why is this the case?
Causes
By far the leading cause behind the physician shortage is the growing elderly population. By 2030, people over the age of 65 is predicted to double, and as a result, they will require more care later into their life, thus increasing the need for doctors.
But this doesn’t just affect the number of patients, in 2029, a third of all practicing physicians in the US will be older than 65, with many of them heading out into retirement.
A clear solution would be to simply train a greater number of medical students, but this is easier said than done. After medical school, graduates can’t go ahead and practice medicine; they must first complete their residency, which is a training program designed to ensure they are prepared to handle all the rigors of Medicine. Without residency, they cannot practice.
And this is where the problem arises, Residencies are funded by the government, specifically, Medicare, and because of this, there isn’t an unlimited amount of money to go around, which means there are a set amount of residency spots.
So, even if we were able to double the number of medical school graduates, we would still have the same amount of practicing physicians as the number of residency spots would stay the same.
Possible Solutions
The first and simplest solution would be to increase the number of residencies, and thankfully, right now congress is looking over a new bill, which may help alleviate our situation. This bill is called the Residency Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2019, and it aims to add 3,000 residency positions every year for the next five years.
It is a great start, and hopefully it will pass through congress, but that is only an 1/8 of the number of spots we need by 2029. And therefore, there also has to be other methods implicated alongside this address our problem.
And luckily there has, many non-physicians are taking on some of the tasks physicians traditionally did, which leads to doctors being able to see more patients. The number of PAs (Physician Assistants) and NPs (Nurse Practitioners) has increased every year.
And this in conjunction with more federal funding for residencies will definitely slow down the physician shortage.
Although very daunting, this is a very solvable problem. America, we have 10 years before the state of our healthcare becomes even more of an issue. However, with increases in funding and programs geared towards our healthcare, and by maintaining continued discussion and action towards increasing the number of health care professionals in the workplace, this so-called crisis can be averted.
References
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/upshot/a-doctor-shortage-lets-take-a-closer-look.html
https://qz.com/1676207/the-us-is-on-the-verge-of-a-devastating-doctor-shortage/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doctor-shortage-us-impact-on-health/
Photography Source:
https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20180524.993081/full/
https://www.theseniorlist.com/data/doctor-shortage/
Editor: Olivia