Texas lawmakers invested millions of additional dollars in the 2013 legislative session to address a looming physician shortage. Voters and university regents have rubber-stamped plans to open two new medical schools, in Austin and the Rio Grande Valley. But those moves have not placated the medical community, which remains concerned that Texas has no long-term solution to produce enough physicians, particularly in primary care, to support the surging population.
Michael Stravato for The Texas Tribune
Plastic surgery residents at a University of Texas Medical Branch hospital in Galveston.
Expanded coverage of Texas is produced by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization. To join the conversation about this article, go to texastribune.org.
"Nobody wants to see this pendulum swing, where there's money for this biennium and no money the next biennium," said Dr. David Wright, chairman of the Texas Medical Association's education committee. "There has to be a better, more stabilized funding mechanism for all of this." (The Texas Medical Association is a corporate sponsor of the Texas Tribune.)
Texas taxpayers already spend $168,000 educating each of the state's medical students. IFor medical school graduates, the state will pay $32.8 million to finance nearly 6,500 medical residency positions in the 2014-15 biennium.
But beginning in 2014, there will be more graduating medical students in Texas than first-year residency slots available in the state, according to a 2012 report by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
"If they are forced to do their residency training outside of Texas because we don't have enough slots, they take that investment with them," said State Senator Jane Nelson, Republican of Flower Mound. Ms. Nelson filed legislation in the last session to offset that trend by devoting $16 million to expand residency opportunities for graduating medical students at Texas facilities.
The majority of that financing — $12.4 million — will be used to create new first-year residency positions in Texas or fill existing slots that are empty for financial reasons. Ms. Nelson's legislation also sets aside $1.9 million in planning grants to help hospitals that do not have accredited residency programs evaluate what it would take to establish them. There is another $2.1 million in incentives for medical schools to encourage students to go into primary care.
"The message is out to any residency program out there that if you want to grow, you can grow," said Stacey Silverman, interim assistant commissioner of the Higher Education Coordinating Board, which is charged with distributing the grants. "It's not a finish line by any standard, but it is an excellent first step, and it gets Texas on the road to solving the physician shortage."
The nation as a whole is facing a physician shortage. The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that the United States will have a shortfall of 90,000 physicians within the next decade. The need will be particularly acute in Texas, which in 2010 had 165 physicians per 100,000 people, compared with the national average of 220.
The number of Texas primary care physicians — whose services prevent patients from developing more costly and harmful conditions — is particularly low. Texas does not have enough primary care doctors in 126 of its 254 counties, according to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, which sets a threshold of one for every 3,000 residents. The majority of those counties are rural.
The state's new grants will mostly benefit hospitals looking to start residency programs from scratch, said Dr. Thomas Blackwell, associate dean of graduate medical education at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He said the financing was not enough to encourage most teaching hospitals, including his own, to expand their programs. (U.T.M.B. is a corporate sponsor of The Tribune.)
"It's not enough, because remember, it only pays for the first year," he said. "So who is going to pay for the other years?"
Residency programs last three to eight years, depending on the specialty. The state's first-year residency grants will provide up to $65,000 per trainee, covering each first-year resident's salary. But factoring in other costs, like supervisors' salaries and the expense of extra tests and procedures ordered by doctors-in-training, each position costs about $100,000 to $150,000 a year, Dr. Blackwell said.
baaronson@texastribune.org
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Texas Tribune: Shortage of Doctors Tough to Fix
Dengan url
http://healtybodyguard.blogspot.com/2013/08/texas-tribune-shortage-of-doctors-tough.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Texas Tribune: Shortage of Doctors Tough to Fix
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Texas Tribune: Shortage of Doctors Tough to Fix
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar