Congress needs to pass a measure to end a longtime cap on funds choking the number of medical residencies in the U.S., the chief of the Association of American Medical Colleges said this week.
"The work that is in the control of medical schools to increase the number of medical students has been done. Congress needs to act," said Darrell Kirch, M.D., while addressing reporters about healthcare workforce challenges at the Association of Health Care Journalists' conference in Phoenix.
He renewed his calls for Congress to pass a bill with bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House .
That legislation would create 15,000 new residencies between 2019 and 2023, half of which would be in specialties experiencing the most acute shortages. The legislation would require further study on strategies for increasing the diversity of the health professional workforce including the number of health professionals from rural, lower income and underrepresented minority communities. Medicare funding for residencies has been frozen since 1997.
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The legislation has bipartisan support but has been passed up in previous Congresses, he said.
Current data projects the U.S. doctor shortage will be between 42,000 and more than 121,000 by 2030. To address the projected shortfall, new medical schools were created and existing medical school programs expanded their class sizes which resulted in a 30 percent increase in medical school graduates since 2002, Kirch said. But that resulted in more people competing for a limited number of medical residencies rather than expanding the overall number of doctors.
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"The medical schools did their job," Kirch said. "The people who didn't do their job were policy makers in Washington."
Among the biggest drivers of the projected doctors shortage is the aging baby boomer population that will create increased demand for medical services, he said. He also raised concern about recruiting a more diverse population of future doctors as well as concern about physicians leaving the profession due to burnout.
