Richard Cooper, M.D., director of the NYIT Center for the Future of the Healthcare Workforce, says the number of doctors is dropping as the demand for quality care grows in the United States.

The $4.6 Trillion Question

“Current medical graduates are entering into a medical profession that will be under enormous stress,” says Cooper. “The essential ingredients are too few physicians, too many patients, too much regulation, and too little trust. The profession is beleagured.”

According to Cooper, the major cost-containment strategies of U.S. presidents from Clinton to Obama have been to reduce reimbursement, constrain the supply of physicians, and regulate how physicians provide care. This has done little to alter the government’s $4.6 trillion projection for health care spending by the year 2020, when it will comprise nearly 20 percent of the country’s GDP.

Primary care is among the hardest hit areas. When Cooper began his research, he expected to find nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) filling a void left by more doctors opting to become specialists over entering primary care. Instead, he found NPs and PAs are following the same pattern and also devoting more effort to hospital services, leaving primary care in the lurch.

Cooper believes the broad representation of health disciplines at NYIT—physicians, nurses, PAs, physical therapists, and others—creates an opportunity to find innovative ways to solve the problem.

“We can draw on NYCOM’s tradition in primary care, NYIT’s breadth of disciplines, and the flexibility of leadership across the university,” says Cooper.

Osteopathic medical schools such as NYCOM are poised to address a shortage of 45,000 primary care physicians projected by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). The good news, according to the American Osteopathic Association, is that family medicine was the most frequently chosen specialty among osteopathic medical students entering residencies this year, and together with internal medicine and pediatrics, the primary care specialties saw a 16 percent jump from 2011.

Last year, NYIT was awarded two grants totaling $2 million from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration to develop a geriatrics curriculum tailored for training family physicians, and to support an accelerated medical education track for students committed to practicing family medicine. The latter will enable undergraduate students to finish their schooling in three years instead of four, while the former addresses the void of primary care physicians prepared to treat America’s aging population.

In a shift of priorities, the AAMC is revising the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) to help identify more well-rounded students. Set to debut in 2015, the new exam will test social sciences, such as communication skills, ethics, and knowledge of diverse, underserved populations. Producing caring, attentive doctors has long been a goal of NYIT; its Department of Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM) upholds the holistic mission of using hearts, hands, and minds—along with a dose of technology— to promote optimal health.

“The passion that we have for our profession and the rigor it requires to be successful are important,” says Wolfgang Gilliar, D.O., professor and chair of the OMM department. “It’s a noble profession, and you have to work for it.”

Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | Next

More Features

Vol. 10 No. 2 Table of Contents