With the passage of health care reform, an estimated thirty two million new patients will try to find primary care doctors. That's not going to be so easy because we already face a shortage of primary care doctors and about 13,000 more will be needed to take care of those newly eligible for insurance.
According to the American Medical Association, there are about 312,000 primary care doctors practicing in the United States. That includes family medicine, general practice (GP), internal medicine, and pediatrics (in addition, there are 43,000 ob-gyn's, who also may serve as primary care doctors). The estimate that another 13,000 will be needed comes from a study done by the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care in partnership with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Sixty five million Americans already live in areas that don't have enough primary care doctors. And relief is not on the way anytime soon. It takes 5 to 8 years for a first year medical student to be trained as a primary care doctor. And the trend for budding doctors over the past decade has been away from primary care and towards more lucrative specialties.
The new legislation contains some incentives for entering into primary care. Medicare will pay a ten percent bonus to doctors spending most of their time giving primary care to the elderly. Medicaid payments will be increased by about 20 percent in 2013 and 2014 to reach 100 percent of the Medicare rate. This is important because about 16 million new patients will be eligible for Medicaid and many doctors currently don't accept Medicaid because reimbursement is so low. In addition, primary care doctors will be paid extra for coordinating care among a team of doctors.
The new incentives are a good start but more is needed to increase our supply of primary care doctors. For this week's CBS Doc Dot Com, my producer, Heather Tesoriero, and I traveled to a rural community in Indiana and discussed the shortage with an old-fashioned family practitioner named Dr. Jason Marker. When he started practicing eight years ago he was $140,000 in debt from medical school loans. He works long hours and sees about 100 patients a week but still owes $125,000. But Dr. Marker isn't in it for the money and he's not looking to heal only the well-heeled. The day we visited him, a man walked five miles to his office from a homeless shelter. When I asked Dr. Marker what keeps him going after a rough day, he admitted that sometimes he wondered if it was all worth it. But then he added, "And then you go into the next room and you have a little old lady give you a big hug and you're ready to go again."
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Please click here to watch my interview with Dr. Marker.
Best,
Jon LaPook
In the short term what I think will happen is we'll attract doctors from overseas who will go to all these medically underserved areas. Good for us but bad for their home countries.
In return for this further subsidation of their studies, individuals could be encouraged to enter primary care.
Years ago I read a book by Martin Gross "The Doctors". In it he states the AMA is purposely holding down the number of MDs for MONEY reasons. It is true the AMA hasn't stepped up the number of doctors graduating each year. There is no planning. No thought of current and future needs. Only the almighty dollar. Don't put more doctors into the market We The MDs want to make hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Now that universal health care is coming the MDs are "squaking"not enough doctors.
Capitalism does not plan. It only Rumbles and gets what it wants there and then.
Banksters and Wall St may indeed be shaping their demise, 2012 might be it!!!!
The "specialists" he has referred me to.... want about $140.
And yes these cheaters are relly socialism for themselves only-they compete with no one
$10 billion allocated over five years to expand, construct, and operate community health centers.
Increases investment in National Health Service Corps to train more primary care doctors as well as dentists and nurse practitioners.
$2.5 billion for health centers operations (including dentistry, low-cost prescription drugs, and mental health care.)
Over the next five years, community health centers will grow nationally from 7,500 to 15,000.
Patients served by the community health centers will grow from 20 million today to 40 million by 2015.
$1.5 billion alloted for loan repayments and scholarships will add more than 17,000 primary care doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and mental health professionals in medically underserved areas -- which is a critically important improvement!
These are excellent first steps in improving our health care .... more ought to be written about the facts!
You mean the Big O didn't think of that before introducing the HC bill? Uh-oh.
How about this. Provide free education for anyone who wants to go into the health care professional for the next ten years - doctors, nurses, etc. That might be a great way to kick start the system because we may have an overcrowding issue at first. On the other hand, lots of the new insured will be young people who probably will not need a lot of care.
If you draw a Supply and Demand curve, and shift the D curve to the right, the S will rise. Over time, the S curve will also shift to the right until the two coincides at an equilibrium. It's simple as that; there's no need for worrying.
Glib is easy. Real solutions are not.
The bill does portend some major setbacks and hindrance in our immediate future, but things will stabilize over time. I foresee an increase of interest of students in the medical professions and growing medical schools. Things will work out; trust me.