A bill introduced by Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) would extend the Teaching Health Center program that helps train medical residents in rural and underserved communities and then replace the THC with a permanent funding stream later.
The bill, The Community-Based Medical Education Act of 2014, aims to address the looming physician shortage. It would extend the THC program, which is expiring, through 2019. The program would train about 550 medical residents each year. Then, starting in 2019, the legislation would replace the program with a permanent funding stream from Medicare, emphasizing the training of primary care physicians. The funding would create 1,500 new residency slots across the country.
"The statistics are clear: If we don't change our system for medical training, millions of Americans will be left behind without access to basic medical care," Senator Murray said in a news release. "This legislation builds on the success we've seen in…Yakima and Tacoma, where future physicians have been trained in community-based, rural and underserved areas and then decided to stay and practice as a primary care physician."
According to projections in the Annals of Family Medicine, the U.S. will be short roughly 52,000 primary care physicians by 2025.