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Hospital Impact has been ranked one of the top 50 healthcare blogs by Wikio.
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I went to the ACHE Chicago Chapter's annual meeting earlier this week where James Orlikoff spoke about the state of our healthcare system. One of the many (depressing) points he made (more on this in future posts) was that we are starting to experience a physician shortage like no other.
I've previously written quite a few entries on the dynamics of the nursing shortage, and rightfully so - the nursing shortage is seen and felt at a majority of hospitals today. 10% vacancy rates are not uncommon.
But after this week, I'm starting to wonder if the impending physician shortage will actually be worse. Yes, the number of medical school students are at the same levels as years past. But, according to Orlikoff, the problem is five-fold:
- Our population is growing faster than the # of medical students (but this one is the least of our problems)
- 50% of current medical students are female, an all-time high. Orlikoff shared an astounding statistic: 10 years after graduation, 60% of female medical students will be working part-time or not working at all. 60%!
- Today's doctors are 3x less productive than the previous generation of doctors. This one is hard to believe until we start thinking about how important work/life balance is to us now.
- More and more medical school graduates don't practice medicine at all. Just look at the recent explosion of MD/MPH, MD/MBA, MD/JD, and MD/PhD degrees. Just look into any Wall Street firm covering biotech stocks and you'll find a boatload of MD healthcare analysts.
- Given that 22% of new MDs are born in other countries, more and more of them are returning back to their home countries. As medical tourism continues to expand, it is actually financially more favorable for some docs to set up a small shop back home.
What is being done to address this problem? Not much it seems, as the most pressing & immediate concern is nurses. Given the nature of our medical education system (4 years MD, 3-5 years residency), I'm scared that the moment we start focusing on this, we'll be at least 10 years too late.
