Primary Care Strains to Retain Physician Loyalty Amid Shortage

[This article posted on July 7, 2009. It is posted within the following categories: CMS, Healthcare Policy & The Media, via Michael Douglas, MD, MBA.]

Senior docs, primary care desperately needs you! In an era in which many training programs in primary care specialties (family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine) seem to be filling up with more foreign medial graduates, an increasing number of the “old guard” are taking responsibility for keeping the legions of non-foreign physicians in the fold — all the while, the newly-minted grads seem to be heading toward specialty care.

There are not enough general care doctors to meet current needs, let alone the demands of some 46 million uninsured, who threaten to swamp the system. It’s a problem growing worse … where more aging doctors are finding they can’t retire. In the U.S., there are at least 4,500 primary care doctors older than 75, according to figures from the Physicians Masterfile database maintained by the American Medical Association.

Although the median income for a family physician was $190 000 last year, that figure pales in comparison with the medians of many sub-specialties — sometimes by as much as $200 000 less. Certainly, it’s easy to attack the sheer numbers, but, for family practice at least, the inability to attract U.S.-trained physicians results from an image problem. Once the specialty (and primary care in general) can reverse the negative perceptions associated with its lack of prestige and CMS hassles, then can the older docs retire without a guilt complex. | LINK