Everyone likes to complain about health insurance costs but none of that matters if we don’t have providers!
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Anonymous
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I cannot understand why this isn’t being shouted from the rooftops. Pretty soon it won’t matter what kind of insurance you have or if we have a single payer because there won’t be enough doctors.
There is a fire burning at our door but it isn’t getting the notice it deserves. Of course the most vulnerable will bear the brunt of this but it’s gonna creep up into the middle and upper middles classes too. “ According to new projections published today by the AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges), the United States will face a physician shortage of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036. “Given the new findings, it is clear that both sustained and increased investments in training new physicians are critical to mitigating projected shortfalls of doctors needed to meet the health care needs of our country,” said AAMC President and CEO David J. Skorton, MD. “Most importantly, if additional investments critical to increasing the supply of physicians fail to materialize, projected shortfalls of doctors will be larger than presented in this latest report.” The new study, The Complexities of Physician Supply and Demand: Projections From 2021 to 2036, was conducted for the AAMC by GlobalData Plc. This analysis was conducted in 2023 and includes multiple supply and demand scenarios. It was updated with the latest information on trends in health care delivery and the state of the health care workforce, such as data on physician work hours and retirement trends. By comparison, the shortage projected in the new report is smaller than the findings demonstrated in the last report published by the AAMC in 2021. The difference is due to a new set of scenarios based on hypothetical future growth in the number of medical residency positions nationwide. The new scenarios demonstrate the positive impact on physician supply if states, teaching health systems and hospitals, Congress, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) continue to build upon their investments in graduate medical education (GME). “Without funding beyond current levels, the graduate medical education growth trajectories hypothesized in this year’s report will not materialize,” Skorton cautioned. “The new data show a smaller projected overall shortfall, demonstrating that this strategy can work if we continue to invest in the physician workforce. The medical education community and policymakers are making real progress in our efforts to meet the projected health care needs of our communities, but we must not be complacent. We must continue to work with Congress to build on their recent bipartisan investments in Medicare-supported graduate medical education.” “In addition, the AAMC examined and found that if communities underserved by the nation’s health care system could obtain care at the same rate as populations with better access to care, the nation would have needed approximately 202,800 more physicians as of 2021. This is more than five times the magnitude of current shortfall estimates based on current utilization. Because these estimates look at alternatives to current utilization, these estimates were excluded from physician shortfall ranges, which are all based on current utilization patterns.” Source: https://www.aamc.org/news/press-releases/new-aamc-report-shows-continuing-projected-physician-shortage |
Anonymous
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Anecdotally, every single one of my doctors works only 2-3 days/week, and they are all young- in their 30s and 40s. My older doctors have all retired, save for one in her 50s who quit medicine abruptly. She was the best doctor I’ve ever had.
I think we either need more medical school slots and residencies or some kind of requirement of working 5 days/week for x number of years if you’re going to take a US residency slot. |
Anonymous
I've been saying for years that medicine is the new lifestyle profession. All of my friends from college who went to med school work part time now and still have enough income to pay for nannies, nice houses, nice vacations, etc. Medicine has always been high paying (and get out of here, doctors who are going to insist that it's not high paying because they have to pay for medical school -- show me your house). But now it's also cush in terms of hours. |
Anonymous
| I’m curious what kind of doctors the prior two pps know? The ones I know work a ton. |
Anonymous
| Well, we all are going to die anyway. Why even bother with healthcare? |
Anonymous
We don’t have healthcare, we have sickcare. Our current system is doing tremendous harm. |
Anonymous
That's like saying why bother to eat. |
Anonymous
It is a bit disappointing to learn how our food has been poisoned for decades. |
Anonymous
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From the article: "Medical schools have done their part by increasing enrollment by nearly 40% since 2002. We must now expand graduate medical education so we are training more doctors to meet the nation’s health care needs."
So are there a bunch of people who got their MDs but can't get residencies? What are they doing? |
Anonymous
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I have to say I’m mystified by all this.
I have a very smart incredibly hard working teen who wants to be a doctor. She did well in HS and got into an excellent college. But now they seem like they want to push half the kids out of pre med with really hard “weed out” classes and a lousy grading curve. And on top of all that coursework she’s supposed to do research (even though no labs have spots thanks to the administration), shadowing (which you basically have to know someone to achieve), clinical hours (really don’t even know how you do this) and volunteering, plus of course studying for the mcat. And that’s all before med school itself and the grind of residency! It really seems like they don’t want people to be doctors! So we end up importing doctors from countries that make it much easier to be doctors. This all seems to make zero sense to me. We are taking our top American students and doing everything we can to duscourage them from becoming doctors. |
Anonymous
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AI can do a lot to save this problem. So many people see 5 specialists before finally seeing the correct doctor to treat a condition. Imagine if more people were directed to the correct specialist, how many appointments would free up.
Imagine you could head into your annual physical with your labs already analyzed by AI and a list of questions to ask. Efficient! Less messages back and forth. Etc. Etc. Note none of these examples use AI to replace medical care, although I could frankly see AI taking over some things like radiology. |
Anonymous
No, they don't see 5 specialists, that's ridiculous. They see a generalist to get a referral, and then 1 specialist. If they don't see the correct specialist, it's because the usual diagnosis tree failed which means AI would not help. You can already show up to your physical with your labs done, you don't need AI for that. As always, AI is a "solution" in search of a problem. Meanwhile we can't talk about real problems because of the AI evangelists taking up all the air. |
Anonymous
If your issues are typically resolved by the first specialist you see, consider yourself lucky! Others, not so much. Particularly for things like GI, thyroid, autoimmune, endocrine, lots of people bounce around for years with no clear diagnosis or effective treatment. ENT, allergies, the list goes on. My child had a relatively minor issue but we had to see 4 specialists to get to someone who could identify it properly. |
Anonymous
The “problem” is that insurance companies don’t want to pay for decent care. They want us to pay huge premiums to use AI we can get for free, while they keep our hard earned money. |
Anonymous
I find something similar and often it's my female specialists with kids who aren't In the office everyday. My PCP doesn't work Fridays. One male specialist isn't in the office Fridays. |