Friday, March 26, 2010
When 32 Million New Patients Look for a Doctor
This post by Jonathan LaPook, ACP Member, appeared at Better Health.
With the passage of healthcare reform, an estimated 32 million new patients will try to find primary care doctors. That's not going to be so easy because we already face a shortage of primary care doctors and about 13,000 more will be needed to take care of those newly eligible for insurance.
According to the American Medical Association, there are about 312,000 primary care doctors practicing in the United States. That includes family medicine, general practice, internal medicine, and pediatrics. (In addition, there are 43,000 OB/GYNs who also may serve as primary care doctors.) The estimate that another 13,000 will be needed comes from a study done by the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care in partnership with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Sixty five million Americans already live in areas that don't have enough primary care doctors. And relief is not on the way anytime soon. It takes five to eight years for a first year medical student to be trained as a primary care doctor. And the trend for budding doctors over the past decade has been away from primary care and towards more lucrative specialties.
The new legislation contains some incentives for entering into primary care. Medicare will pay a 10% bonus to doctors spending most of their time giving primary care to the elderly. Medicaid payments will be increased by about 20% in 2013 and 2014 to reach 100% of the Medicare rate. This is important because about 16 million new patients will be eligible for Medicaid and many doctors currently don't accept Medicaid because reimbursement is so low. In addition, primary care doctors will be paid extra for coordinating care among a team of doctors.
The new incentives are a good start but more is needed to increase our supply of primary care doctors. For this week's CBS Doc Dot Com, my producer, Heather Tesoriero, and I traveled to a rural community in Indiana and discussed the shortage with an old-fashioned family practitioner named Dr. Jason Marker. When he started practice eight years ago he was $140,000 in debt from medical school loans. He works long hours and sees about 100 patients a week, but still owes $125,000.
But Dr. Marker isn't in it for the money and he's not looking to heal only the well-healed. The day we visited him, a man walked five miles to his office from a homeless shelter. When I asked Dr. Marker what keeps him going after a rough day, he admitted that sometimes he wondered if it was all worth it. But then he added, "And then you go into the next room and you have a little old lady give you a big hug and you're ready to go again."
Click here to watch my interview with Dr. Marker.
Jon LaPook, ACP Member
This post originally appeared on Better Health, a network of popular health bloggers brought together by Val Jones, MD. Better Health's mission is to support and promote health care professional bloggers, provide insightful and trustworthy health commentary, and help to inform health policy makers about the provider point of view on health care reform, science, research and patient care.
Labels: health care delivery, health care reform, medical education, primary care shortage
posted by the Better Health network at
10:01 AM
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1 Comments:
I enjoy caring for Medicaid patients, but how will the system accomodate another 16 million enrollees? Not only is there a shortage of primary care, but Medicaid reiumbursment is about 66%of private payors. Can physicians, at least those of us in private practice, afford to take them on? The states are worried also, because after 3 years, they will have to contribute to the Medicaid program, and most of them are already out of cash. www.MDWhistleblower.blogspot.com
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