Reversing the shortage of “Gatekeepers”
Spencer Brodsky | Sunday, February 13, 2011 at 07:56PM November 1-5, 2010 marked the twelfth consecutive year the health care profession will celebrate National Primary Care Week. According to National AMSA, “it is an annual event to highlight the importance of primary care and bring health care professionals together to discuss and learn about generalist and interdisciplinary health care, particularly its impact on and importance to underserved populations.” The “celebration” this year marks a time when primary care physicians are becoming a rarity among those entering the medical profession. With rising costs of medical school and soaring student loans, it is no wonder why many medical students are going into higher paying specialties. It has been recently reported that “only about 5% of graduating physicians plan to go into general or family medicine.” This is an alarming situation considering that experts have been predicting a shortage of almost 40,00 primary care physicians by the year 2020.
While the number of primary care physicians entering the field has been dropping, the need for family and rural doctors is stronger than ever. Those in the primary care field are considered the “gatekeepers” of the system. They direct the patient to the appropriate speciaist. They teach the patient preventive health measures to reduce the epidemic growth of obesity and diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and, hypertension. They are responsible for the early detection and diagnosis of many potentially life threatening diseases. Their key role can reduce hospital visits, the number of surgeries, and even the number of deaths on a national level. In recent years, however, their indispensible place on the health care stage has not been enough to encourage an influx to the field.
Despite all of the setbacks in recent years, this past March may have been the key turning point in preventing the projected shortage. Embedded in 900+ pages of the Affordable Care Act, signed by President Obama on March 23rd , are safeguards to help encourage medical students to consider entering primary care. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, recently announced $250 million in federal grants, as part of the Affordable Care Act earmarked at aiding the primary care shortage. The funds will be used to provide training for primary care doctors and other health professionals. The Ventura County Star has reported that “ along with $500 million in federal stimulus funds committed to fight primary care shortages, the grants are expected to train 16,000 new healthcare workers dedicated to primary care over the next five years.” Grant money will also be used to help primary care physicians relieve debt incurred by medical school student loans, a sure encouragement to those straying away from the field due to a fear of starting a profession with huge loans to repay. The Affordable Care Act clearly has many focuses, but increasing primary care physicians through a “stimulus package” could actually be the quick fix that the system needs to allow for long term stability. The prospect of lessening the financial burden for new primary care doctors may just be the tipping point to draw a medical student into this field. While it seems to be inevitable that as we learn more about the intricacies of the human body, and as we develop new technologies, medicine will continue to become more and more specialized. This will only heighten the need for more primary care doctors to diagnose patients and remain the “gatekeepers,” thereby keeping the whole system afloat.
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