Hospital Impact describes James Orlikoff's speech at the ACHE Chicago Chapter's annual meeting about the state of the healthcare system.
Link: hospital impact - Nursing Shortage? What about the impending physician shortage?.
What about the impending physician shortage? ...according to Orlikoff, the problem is five-fold:
- Our population is growing faster than the # of medical students (but this one is the least of our problems)
- 50% of current medical students are female, an all-time high. Orlikoff shared an astounding statistic: 10 years after graduation, 60% of female medical students will be working part-time or not working at all. 60%!
- Today's doctors are 3x less productive than the previous generation of doctors. This one is hard to believe until we start thinking about how important work/life balance is to us now.
- More and more medical school graduates don't practice medicine at all. Just look at the recent explosion of MD/MPH, MD/MBA, MD/JD, and MD/PhD degrees. Just look into any Wall Street firm covering biotech stocks and you'll find a boatload of MD healthcare analysts.
- Given that 22% of new MDs are born in other countries, more and more of them are returning back to their home countries. As medical tourism continues to expand, it is actually financially more favorable for some docs to set up a small shop back home.
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