Marcelo Somers

Health care reform will fail to achieve its promise of affordable access to medical care unless the nation’s physician workforce is substantially expanded to meet the demand that newly insured patients will place on an already over-burdened system.

A comprehensive strategy for growing the physician workforce – as well as other allied health professionals such as nurses and physicians’ assistants – should be developed and supported with a federal investment at the same time health insurance is expanded to cover millions of additional people.

Without this, gaining access to prompt medical care for all patients will become even more difficult. There will be longer wait times for appointments, less face time with a physician and, in all likelihood, delayed diagnoses leading to more expensive treatment and increased risk of complications. One need only look at the experience of Massachusetts, where the adoption of universal health coverage has intensified the physician shortage.

…

The AAMC has called for a 30 percent increase in medical school enrollments by 2015, and higher education institutions are responding, both by increasing enrollment at existing medical schools and by establishing new schools of medicine, such as the one under development at the University of California, Riverside, in the heart of one of the most medically underserved regions in the state.

This is a follow-up to my post a few weeks ago. I have to say that although the government’s healthcare reform bill didn’t directly address the issue of rising costs, I’m glad to see the AAMC reacting appropriately. We’ll have to see if they stimulate enough additional doctors to actually lower costs, or if we’ll just see a match to the increased demand from the ObamaCare bill.

Either way, I guess I have to agree with a conversation I had yesterday that something is better than nothing. At least the government has stimulated a response from the healthcare industry, and we can only hope that it will work.