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Showing posts from January, 2019

Open Letter to Family Medicine Leaders Regarding Expansion of FM

Please reconsider your plans to devote major resources to expand family medicine graduates. We must work together for FM, but we must be effective. Effective efforts must be specificity to address the problem. The problem in primary care cannot be solved by training. More reports, conferences, staff resources, and association resources would waste time, effort, and energy. It is meaningless to attempt to expand any primary care, generalist, or general specialty workforce without the dollars specific to support more delivery team members. Only a major improvement of the financial design can support more team members in more locations - especially where most Americans have the least by design. The lack of effectiveness of more graduates is obvious and has been for decades. New sources of primary care and massive expansions of four sources have not resolved deficits of primary care or workforce where needed. The glut of workforce created will make matters worse. The finan

The Glut of Health Workforce Exposed But Ignored

When you spend a decade or more preparing and training for a career as a physician or as a nurse practitioner, you expect that you life will improve with your new employment. This is no longer a reliable expectation. Decades of overproduction of NP, PA, DO, and MD graduates will have consequences for graduates as well as for our nation. High debt from tuition, higher cost of living, the challenges of becoming a young health professional, and the difficulties dealing with employers that hold all the cards - will collaborate for worsening outcomes. The burnout, turnover, productivity, and suicide issues will intensify. Slowing Population Growth Magnifies Overproduction The new census figures indicate a slowing of population growth. This translates to a glut of health care workforce even worse than previously projected. Previous calculations of expansions used 0.72% as the annual growth rate from older census data. The newer figures are 0.62%. The decline will continue to 0.6% or