States Faces Shortages of Primary Care Doctors

edited to change the title

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june09/doctors_01-06.html

"...A recent survey published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that only 2 percent of medical students plan to go into primary care. And since 1997, the number of medical school graduates going into the field has dropped 50 percent...

...Medical school loans are huge
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Now, with the economy in disarray, more of these students have an even more compelling reason to stay away from primary care...

...BETTY ANN BOWSER: But there are other reasons medical students are steering away from the field. Because primary care doctors are generalists who deal with a wide range of medical issues, they have to justify more types of treatment decisions with insurance companies..."


In Massachusetts...

"...The result is nearly 95 percent of residents now have health insurance; 440,000 people previously uninsured are covered.

But the downside has been that there aren't enough primary care doctors to go around. Here in Hampshire County in western Massachusetts, at least 20 primary care physicians have closed their practice or retired in the past two years..."

There's going to be a glut of specialties when we go to Universal Healthcare.

addressing the reasons so many are choosing to not go into primary care and offer incentives to those who do.

My family care physician is terrific and is a conduit to a specialist when I need one. But he is great on general health care and I go to him once a year for my general check up or if I have bronchitis, the flu, etc.

It will be a sad day when all of these general practioners go out of business...they diagonosed my high bloodpressure and also recommended to me a gastroenterologist for my diverticulitis.

In the primary instance, I'm referring to preventable medical errors, which account for a huge percentage of suits, and are repeatedly committed by a small percentage of doctors.

But until they're willing to clean their own house, they get not one whit of sympathy from me.

the facts that will impact us all in the coming years, there are problems that need to be addressed.


"...BETTY ANN BOWSER: The 46-year-old Dr. Atkinson often works seven days a week and spends a lot of time on the phone dealing with insurance issues.

DR. KATE ATKINSON: I spend more time doing paperwork and less time talking to patients. And every time there's a problem, the solution is to generate another form or another hurdle that the doctors need to go through.

If you come to me and you have stomach pains, what medicine I can put you on depends upon your insurance company. I wasn't trained to say, "What's your insurance company before making a treatment decision?" And now I have to..."

I understand that insurance has become a major pain, but a lot of these Students are the same ones fighting any Health care reform because they want that FAT paycheck. Sorry to say, this stat proves why Medicine and Insurance can no longer be treated like a business.

doubt that many of them are spending time fighting health care reform.

This program was not to elicit sympathy for med students, it warns of a shortage of primary care doctors.