Or maybe he won't as there won't be enough doctors to see us in the near future. That's the warning of Benjamin Brewer in today's Wall Street Journal. Over the past eleven years the number of new doctors entering a family practice each year has been cut in half: 2340 in 1997 vs. 1172 in 2008. Should this continue, we'll never have the 140,000 family doctors we need in 2020. This represents an increase of 40,000 over the 100,000 family doctors practicing in this country in 2006.
Of course, the federal government is not helping matters. The FY2009 budget eliminates any grants for primary care physicians. And the issue is largely money. If doctors don't get paid enough for seeing us now, the number of us being seen will certainly decline.
As Brewer argues, universal health care cannot work unless there are enough doctors. That's kind of a basic fact that is seldom covered in all these grandiose solutions to our health situation.
1 comment:
The shortage of physicians in primary care specialties is often ignored by those who focus on "insurance coverage" as the only factor that limits access to medical care.
Financial incentives are a large part of why intelligent young Americans are not choosing to enter primary care medical specialties; however, the onerous bureaucratic processes associated with Medicare/Medicaid and the insurance industry have a negative impact on physicians' workplaces, tying up time in prior-authorizations and coding/billing issues, and delaying payment for services. Until these issues are addressed, there will continue to be more family physicians heading for the door than entering the profession.
Post a Comment