Mandatory Health Insurance...plenty of patients but where are the doctors?
A recent article in the Boston Globe (Sept. 22, 2008) highlights a few of the upcoming challenges that Massachusetts will face as a result of the upcoming implementation of the MA health insurance mandate. The most immediate of these is the lengthy wait times for receiving an appt. with a primary care physcician (PCP). The average wait time to see an Internist was 52 days and 46 days to see an OB/GYN.
These long wait times are the result of a shortage of PCPs, lack of focus on preventive health care, administrative burdon, and misdirected physician compensation schemes. According to MMS President Dr. Bruce S. Auerbach, who recently addressed a session of the National Congress on Health Reform in Wasington, D.C., there are severe labor shortages in:
- Internal Medicine
- Family Medicine
- Vascular Surgery
- Neurosurgery
- Cardiology
- Anesthesiology
- Psychiatry
- Gastroenterology
- Urology
How to Increase PCP Supply?
In an attempt to increase the availability of PCPs, the federal and state government have funded a number of programs, including:
- loan forgiveness programs
- advanced medical home pilot projects
- expanded primary care training
From the Boston Globe article...
The Massachusetts law includes $1.5 million this year to help the University of Massachusetts Medical School expand its class size - from 103 students to as many as 125 - and to waive tuition and fees for students who agree to work as primary care doctors in Massachusetts for four years after they finish training.This is indeed a crisis situation. If the state is moving towards free education for medical students interested in primay care, it is a clear sign of the dire circumstances facing the population of Massachusetts, and the rest of the United States.
So what can be done about this?
There are several proposed solutions. Together with AMSA, FMIG has planned a series of events for National Primary Care Week (Oct. 5-11) to highlight the challenges and potential solutions facing health care in the United States of America. Come and find out for yourself what we can do as future health professionals to best prepare for the difficult sitations waiting for us upon graduation.
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