No End in Sight for Doctor Shortage

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southwestforests
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20 Dec 2009, 9:10 am

No End in Sight for Doctor Shortage

Quote:

(Dec. 16) -- The nation is short of thousands of primary-care doctors. Medical schools plan to add 3,000 first-year students by 2018, but that won't be enough to meet the need, according to a report from Bloomberg.com.
Though schools plan to educate more doctors, the demand for physicians is expected to soar if Congress passes a health care reform plan aimed at getting insurance to 31 million more Americans. The bill is being debated at a time when government-funded training for doctors has been frozen for 12 years, Bloomberg reported.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aMUUwixXaq_I

Quote:

Doctor Shortage in U.S. Won’t Be Aided by More Medical Students

By Pat Wechsler

Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- To combat a nationwide shortage of doctors, medical schools in the U.S. plan to add 3,000 first- year students by 2018. It won’t be enough.

The expansion, pushed for by the Association of American Medical Colleges, is being undercut by a U.S. health-care overhaul designed to supply medical insurance to an additional 31 million Americans and a cap on government-funded physician training programs that’s been frozen in place for 12 years, said Steven Safyer, of Montefiore Medical Center.

Last year, there were 16,721 fewer primary-care doctors than needed in inner city and rural areas, according to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. Residencies, the hospital based-training doctors undergo before they can practice medicine on their own, have been capped by Congress at about 90,000 since 1997 as a way to curb rising medical costs.

“Do the math,” said Safyer, president and chief executive officer at the New York hospital, in a telephone interview. “You give millions more people insurance, and it adds up to a much worse shortage.”

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Jimbeaux
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20 Dec 2009, 12:40 pm

And it is just going to get worse if health care reform passes. My biological mom (I was adopted) is a gynecologist. She is in her mid-50's. If health care reform passes, her and a lot of her colleagues are quitting medicine all together.

southwestforests
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20 Dec 2009, 5:59 pm

Jimbeaux wrote:

If health care reform passes, her and a lot of her colleagues are quitting medicine all together.

My Physician is old enough to retire but keeps on because he likes doing medicine with small town people.
He has said point blank he and people he knows will say adios in a hurry.

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"Every time you don't follow your inner guidance,
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Mainichi
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20 Dec 2009, 8:38 pm

southwestforests wrote:

Jimbeaux wrote:

If health care reform passes, her and a lot of her colleagues are quitting medicine all together.

My Physician is old enough to retire but keeps on because he likes doing medicine with small town people.
He has said point blank he and people he knows will say adios in a hurry.

So will one my Physician he said he will quit medicine and shut down his pratice he worked so hard for. He still in his 40's and will do something else I suppose.

One big reason why they want health care reform passed, is that the National Health Service in the UK is the 3rd largest employer in the world. If it passes America will by far surpass the UK's
NHS in # of employees.

Tory_canuck
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21 Dec 2009, 12:19 am

You should be recruiting up here in Alberta.The Alberta government put in a hiring freeze saying we have a surplus despite the fact people are in pain and/or are dying on waiting lists.

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southwestforests
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21 Dec 2009, 3:00 pm

After talking about doctor shortage and doctors quitting, wondered about doctors going on strike.
Googled that and came up with this quote from a book named "Atlas Shrugged" by someone named Ayn Rand.
Don't know the book, haven't read it.

Quote from the book is on some dude's radio show website with his commentary.

Quote:

Anyway ... in Rand's book a distinguished brain surgeon decided to join Galt's strike. Here's what he had to say. Read this and you'll know why so many people just love Atlas Shrugged:

Ayn Rand wrote:

"I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago," said Dr. Hendricks. "Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything - except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the 'welfare' of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only 'to serve.' That a man who's willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards - never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind - yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of a man who resents it - and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn't."

Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged

My favorite line in that excerpt? This one: Cut it out, memorize it, place it on your bathroom mirror so you see it every morning. It beautifully applies to our modern-day politicians as ....

....men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun.

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Amajanshi
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25 Dec 2009, 8:32 am

There's also a doctor shortage here in Australia, especially in the rural areas.

There has actually been a higher intake of new Med students nationally in the past few years, however there aren't enough resources to train all of them here for Internship after 5 or 6 years' time, which means that a certain %age of them will be forced to do their postgraduate training overseas.

The International Med students will receive the lowest priority in doing their Internship here, so many have been very disappointed when they heard the news.

It's like a bottleneck which gradually became narrower and narrower over the years. They claim it's lack of resources in training, but I'm pretty sure that there's some sort of hidden "corruption/greed" by certain head people in the AMA during this entire time who limited the training spots, so there'd be fewer GPs/specialists in the future so they can artificially maintain the salaries... :evil:

Wombat
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25 Dec 2009, 11:53 pm

Amajanshi wrote:

There's also a doctor shortage here in Australia, especially in the rural areas.

The situation in Australia is very bad. A huge percentage of doctors and nurses are in their 50's and 60's and will retire in the next few years.

The answer is NOT to bring in more idiots like "Dr Death" (Australians will understand) from third world countries who can't afford to lose them.

No, the answer is for the government to spend a few billion dollars to train young Australians who would love to be doctors, nurses, dentists etc but who can't afford to pay their way through university.

Offer them a full scholarship and living expenses if they contract to work where are sent and needed for ten years after graduation.

After their ten year "hitch" is up they would be free to do as they please.

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