Impending Physician Shortage: Lessons in Supply and Demand:

The above image was taken from here. All rights are served to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AKA the AAMC).

Lately, in conversations with physicians and corporate health plan executives, I have been hearing a lot about the expected shortage of physicians in general and of primary care physicians in particular. The Association of American Medical Colleges forecasts a shortage of 90,500 physicians by 2020. This is due to a confluence of factors including:

1. Many physicians retiring
2. Not enough physicians being graduated from American Medical Schools
3. An estimated 30,000,000 additional Americans who are going to have health insurance from Obamacare
4. The aging of America as baby boomers become senior citizens and require more healthcare services
5. Low reimbursement rates from Medicare and other payors for primary care physicians

Personally, I believe that we won't experience the acute shortage of physicians that many are forecasting. I believe with some minor policy changes, we can properly align incentives to promote an equilibrium quantity of physicians in general and primary care physicians in particular.

I will discuss this more fully in a later post but some ideas to think about:

1. Increase the quantity of Nurse Practitioners and Physicians Assistants
2. Create more residency slots so we can allow more newly minted physicians to place into residencies after completing their medical education. Also, this will allow more foreign medical school graduates to find residency positions which will also increase the quantity of physicians available
3. Mandate more residency slots be offered in areas where shortages exist like the primary care field and less in specialties which offer high reimbursements but no shortages of docs
4. Technological innovations like primary care physician software that automatically orders specific tests and tracks certain metrics (like weight, blood pressure, glucose, etc) to help physicians monitor health without as many office visits
5. Increased use of email, teleconferences, and videoconferences for physician-patient contacts to answer minor questions when a full appointment is not really needed

To be continued....