Article of the Week: A looming doctor shortage

by Fareed Saleh
Children's National

Two recently published articles in the NYT highlight some of the ripple effects of the Affordable Care Act as it continues to be phased in across the country. With increasing coverage comes a need for more medical care providers to meet the rise in demand. This increased demand is compounded by the aging baby boomers, who have greater health care needs, in addition to a steady decline in medical students opting for residencies outside of primary care or subspecialties within primary care. It's something we all know but provides a nice recap.

What are some possible solutions to balancing the supply (medical providers) and demand ('customers' or patients)? This is where the second article from NYT comes into play. One possibility is to rely on medical providers trained outside the US. Also, the article profiles how foreign medical graduates face numerous hurdles to practice medicine in the US and brings up an interesting comparison with Canada's policies for credentialing, which accepts previous medical training depending on where the FMGs hail from.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but it most likely is some combination of increasing supply (i.e., increasing the number of all medical providers-MDs,DOs,NPs,PAs) and managing demand (i.e., bolstering preventive medicine initiatives, better health education).

Finally, I was relieved to read that even though there is a shortage of primary care providers, we currently have a surplus of dermatologists and plastic surgeons in this country.