Physicians Trained Abroad Can Ease America's Doctor Shortage
By G. Richard Olds, MD
Washington, DC
A wave of doctors will soon hang up their stethoscopes. More than one-third of physicians will be 65 or older within a decade.
Their retirements, coupled with our nation's aging population, spell trouble for the healthcare system. By 2030, the country may have 105,000 fewer doctors than it needs to meet patient demand. Over 40 percent of that shortage will be in primary care.
The solution to that shortage lies abroad, at international medical schools. Graduates of these schools are far more likely to enter primary care and practice in underserved areas than their domestically educated peers. America needs more of them.
By 2030, the share of Americans ages 65 and older will grow by 55 percent. The doctor corps is not exempt from this demographic trend. Consider just one crucial specialty -- obstetrics and gynecology. Only 14 percent of OB/GYNs today are younger than 40.
Many regions throughout the country, especially rural ones, can't afford to see doctors retire. South Dakota has enough primary-care physicians to meet 37 percent of the state's total demand. Nebraska's primary-care workforce can only meet 42 percent of demand.
Worse, help isn't on the way -- at least, not from US medical schools. Less than 40 percent of US-trained graduates chose primary care in 2015. And even that number is high. Many of this "primary care" group selected internal medicine but plan to subspecialize within the field. Less than 9 percent of graduates from American MD programs entered a family medicine residency between 2014 and 2015.
International medical graduates are ready to meet America's primary care needs. Last year, nearly 70 percent of internationally trained doctors who accepted residencies did so in primary care. Many of them were US citizens, returning home after their training abroad.
Despite lying outside US borders, St George's University in Grenada, where I teach, is America's top source of new primary-care doctors. Last year, three-quarters of the more than 900 residencies our graduates took were in primary care. Most of our students are actually Americans -- 74 percent of our student body has US citizenship, and 19 percent are US permanent residents.
Despite this apparent influx of doctors educated abroad, America still needs more -- particularly in primary care. Here's how to get them.
First, US leaders must create more residency positions, especially in areas with doctor shortages and in high-need specialties like family medicine and primary care. The majority of doctors who have completed their training since 2007 are practicing in the state where they did their residency. So underwriting residencies in high-need areas would address their shortage of doctors.
Currently, the federal government caps the number of slots available for federal funding -- a policy that artificially suppresses the supply of residencies when America needs to be training more doctors. Raising that cap would help alleviate America's doctor shortage.
There's room for private interests to help address the issue, too.
In 2016, the Walmart Foundation gave the Northwest Arkansas Community Internal Medicine Residency Program $750,000 to cover its first two years of operating costs. The goal is to fund 24 medical residents by this year in an area of the state that could use almost 150 more.
Patient demand for doctors is outstripping the ability of US medical schools to supply them. Graduates of international medical schools are eager to fill that gap. America's leaders must let them.
(G. Richard Olds, MD, is President of St George's University, www.sgu.edu).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
