{"id":14485,"date":"2024-08-22T19:02:32","date_gmt":"2024-08-22T19:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=14485"},"modified":"2024-08-22T19:02:33","modified_gmt":"2024-08-22T19:02:33","slug":"free-medical-school-wont-solve-the-doctor-shortage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=14485","title":{"rendered":"Free medical school won\u2019t solve the doctor shortage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“The US does have significantly fewer doctors per capita<\/a> than some other wealthy nations, such as Germany and Sweden. But America\u2019s physician-to-patient ratio is actually about the same as other developed countries \u2014 Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, France \u2014 that still generally rank better<\/a> on measures of health care quality than the US does. So aggregate numbers alone are not enough to explain the access problems that patients face, and experts disagree over whether we need to boost the overall supply of providers in the short term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bigger problem is misallocation in the US physician workforce, Coffman told me last year. We know that we don\u2019t have enough doctors in certain important specialties: primary care, obstetrics, and psychiatry, for example. We also don\u2019t have nearly enough providers in a broad swath of specialties practicing in rural and other low-income communities. Between 2010 and 2017, while large urban counties added 10 doctors per 100,000 people on average<\/a>, rural counties lost three. As a result, metro regions had 125 doctors per 100,00 patients, while rural areas had 60.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

America is littered with doctor deserts<\/a>, areas where there are not enough primary care providers, much less specialists or hospital-level services. The federal government estimates<\/a> that 80 percent of rural Americans live in medically underserved communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the long term, the US will undoubtedly need more doctors in rural and urban areas alike. Groups like the Association of American Medical Colleges continue to project<\/a> long-term workforce shortages, as boomer-generation doctors reach retirement age and the population of seniors requiring medical care swells.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/361620\/bloomberg-johns-hopkins-free-medical-school-doctor-shortage<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The US does have significantly fewer doctors per capita than some other wealthy nations, such as Germany and Sweden. But America\u2019s physician-to-patient ratio is actually about the same as other developed countries \u2014 Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, France \u2014 that still generally rank better on measures of health care quality than the US does. So aggregate numbers alone are not enough to explain the access problems that patients face, and experts disagree over whether we need to boost the overall supply of providers in the short term.
\nThe bigger problem is misallocation in the US physician workforce, Coffman told me last year. We know that we don\u2019t have enough doctors in certain important specialties: primary care, obstetrics, and psychiatry, for example. We also don\u2019t have nearly enough providers in a broad swath of specialties practicing in rural and other low-income communities. Between 2010 and 2017, while large urban counties added 10 doctors per 100,000 people on average, rural counties lost three. As a result, metro regions had 125 doctors per 100,00 patients, while rural areas had 60.<\/p>\n

America is littered with doctor deserts, areas where there are not enough primary care providers, much less specialists or hospital-level services. The federal government estimates that 80 percent of rural Americans live in medically underserved communities.<\/p>\n

In the long term, the US will undoubtedly need more doctors in rural and urban areas alike. Groups like the Association of American Medical Colleges continue to project long-term workforce shortages, as boomer-generation doctors reach retirement age and the population of seniors requiring medical care swells.”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/361620\/bloomberg-johns-hopkins-free-medical-school-doctor-shortage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[424,639,81,80,73,50,70],"class_list":["post-14485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-doctor","tag-doctors","tag-health","tag-health-system","tag-healthcare","tag-medical","tag-medical-prices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14486,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14485\/revisions\/14486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}