The nation’s shortage of doctors will rise to between 46,000 and 90,000 by 2025 as the U.S. population grows, more Americans gain health insurance and new alternative primary care sites proliferate. A new study announced by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), a lobby for medical schools and teaching hospitals, said “the doctor shortage is real” with total physician demand projected to grow by up to 17 percent as a population of baby boomers ages and the Affordable Care Act is implemented. “It’s particularly serious for the kind of medical care that our aging population is going to need,” said Dr. Darrell Kirch, AAMC’s president in a statement accompanying the analysis by research firm IHS. Primary care doctors, in particular, are in short supply. The report estimates that between 12,500 and 31,000 primary care doctors will be needed even as retail clinics, outpatient centers and other models use more nurse practitioners, physician assistants and other allied health professionals. The AAMC and other doctor groups have long warned of this. Family physicians, pediatricians and internists are needed as trends in insurance payment emphasize population health and value-based care, moving away from fee-for-service medicine that leads to excess and unnecessary tests and procedures. Already, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has said it will increase value-based payments while big insurers Aetna (AET), UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Anthem (ANTM) Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans and others are moving to do the same. “The physician shortage will grow over the next 10 years under every likely scenario,” Kirch said. “Because training a doctor takes between five and 10 years, we must act now, in 2015, if we are going to avoid serious physician shortages in 2025. The solution requires a multi-pronged approach: continuing to innovate and be more efficient in the way care is delivered, as well as increased federal support for graduate medical education to train at least 3,000 more doctors a year to meet the health care needs of our nation’s growing and aging population.” Source
