Thread: Would Adding Residency Slots Solve the Primary-Care Shortage? - WSJ.com

Would Adding Residency Slots Solve the Primary-Care Shortage? - Health Blog - WSJ

This is the trend due to economics. The country spends more on useless projects and aid to terrorist states but deems a 10 billion dollar increase in residency slots as 'too expensive'. Doctors lobbies want to keep supply low as well to ensure high salaries. 24% of AMGs are considering primary care, in a few years that will go down to 10%. There is no point from an American medical perspective to pump more money into slots for primary care especially if 75% of primary care residencies are being filled by IMGs and DOs. Nurses are pushing for more and more power and are getting it because the AMA is more concerned with it's own selfish desires.

NPs shouldn't be included at all, but this is the way the trend is going. Might as well get used to it and heed warnings. What i have stated was actually mentioned by the dean of a medical school.

Baylor's Kelsey-Seybold Clinic Family Medicine Residency to Close in 2011 -- AAFP News Now -- American Academy of Family Physicians

Originally Posted by Shiz77

For your career, unless you want to compete with NPs for 90k/year salaries then by all means don't specialize

OR you could find your niche in a community that really needs you and reap the rewards while everyone else is fighting over the specialty jobs.

Originally Posted by Arkie

OR you could find your niche in a community that really needs you and reap the rewards while everyone else is fighting over the specialty jobs.

glass is half full approach...good call

Originally Posted by Arkie

OR you could find your niche in a community that really needs you and reap the rewards while everyone else is fighting over the specialty jobs.

For one there won't be a 'fight' over specialty jobs. For two, there are more and more NP schools opening up all over the country. If there was a niche in your community where you could reap the rewards I bet a couple of NPs would have already opened up their practice by there.

Arguments presented on this thread seem to conflict with arguments made on other threads. I was told on other threads that by starting medical school in may 2010, by the time its my turn to match it will be very hard to match into a fp/im/peds residency as US schools are increasing enrollment and residency spots are not increasing meaning that the US grads will take most of residency spots including ones once mostly filled by imgs/fmgs. So wouldn't more primary case residencies by good for us?

Shizz, where are you getting your numbers from. If residency spots are not increasing and US medical school enrollment is, then how does the math work out that US medical school grad intrest in primary care will decrease not increase? If there are more applicants and less spots, AMG intrest in primary care would interest bc not all of them would be able to get into a speciality.

Okay they want a TOTAL 2000 slot increase over TEN years. That's 200 slots a year. Even if the slots are put towards general surg and primary care you have lets say a 50/50 spli, you have a 100 slots each.

Now it's not only PGY 1, it's for all PGYS 1-5 for surg. So out of the 200 slots each year, 100 will be for general surg, of which only 20 will be for PGY-1 which relates to the match and 100 for primary care which gives us 33 for PGY-1(I'm assuming only 3 years for primary care residencies). So you will have 50 slots a year only for residency matching and most likely the increase will not happen until the 2012 match, which gives anyone who is applying to the 2014 match an increase in 100 slots. Considering which by then there will be thousands more MDs and DOs applying by then.

Originally Posted by docdonny

Shizz, where are you getting your numbers from. If residency spots are not increasing and US medical school enrollment is, then how does the math work out that US medical school grad intrest in primary care will decrease not increase? If there are more applicants and less spots, AMG intrest in primary care would interest bc not all of them would be able to get into a speciality.

There is a group called COGME, which is the Council of Graduate medical education. They pretty much advise congress on doctors and one of their recent reports stated that it's better to have a shortage than a surplus. The US med school increase was actually in part to push out IMGs and all the PCP shortage does exist but will be taken care of by NPs. In the end it's all about costs.

Increasing PCP slots will definitely help