Shortage of primary care physicians in the US

However, the shortage can be avoided by the US by adhering to certain guidelines.

US faces physicians’ shortage—The US has a shortage of doctors. As per the available figures, by the year 2020, there will be a shortfall of nearly 100,000 primary care physicians in the US.

And nearly additional 160,000 doctors will be needed by 2025, states a prediction by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Out of these, nearly fifty percent will be the primary care physicians needed in the US, the prediction further maintains.

The US is facing a huge shortage of doctors including primary care physicians and the shortfall will worsen in the coming years, estimates by the Association of American Medical Colleges show.

How to solve shortage of doctors in the US—Growing shortage of physicians, especially primary care physicians in the US can be overcome if the US works towards changing its policies. Yes, it is true.

The US is, more or less, facing increased dependence on the physicians having training from overseas. And the demand for such overseas trained physicians will go up in the next couple of years.

However, the US can avoid such shortage of physicians by having same license rules for the US educated physicians as well as overseas-educated physicians. This has been found by a new study undertaken by University of Virginia recently.

According to authors of the study named ‘Doctors With Borders: Occupational Licensing as an Implicit Barrier to High Skill Migration”, one of the solution to the increasing shortage of physicians in the US is decreasing obstacles to foreign trained medical graduates coming to the US.

This would encourage more and more foreign-trained medical graduates to come to the US and work as physicians thus proving to be a blessing in solving physician shortage in the US.

And this would directly help in saving US health care costs to a great extent, the study authors maintain. So, the US must work towards eliminating barriers for international medical graduates to put to an end the crisis of US physician shortage.