The primary care shortage will not be solved until the specialty is better compensated and more residency slots are available, William Paolo, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine and public health and preventive medicine at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, N.Y., wrote in a letter to the editor for Syracuse.com.
"Until primary care becomes more valued and reasonably compensated as the cornerstone of a thriving and effective healthcare system or student debt drastically decreases, there will be no foreseeable end to the dearth of primary care providers," wrote Dr. Paolo.
The letter was a response to commentary from Joseph Flaherty, MD, dean and chancellor of Ross University School of Medicine, a medical school in Portsmouth, Dominica, a Caribbean island. Dr. Flaherty wrote that international medical graduates can help meet the state of New York's need for primary care physicians and provide more racially and socioeconomically diverse physicians.
However, Dr. Paolo counters that more international graduates are not necessarily what New York needs. Instead, it needs more residency spots. The country is on track in 2017 to graduate more physicians from domestic medical schools than there are residencies available, he wrote.
"This problem has not been addressed and the adding of more physicians in the front end in the form of offshore or international medical schools is not going to address nor stem this problem, as it currently only contributes to the glut of untrained physicians in the logjam," Dr. Paolo wrote.
Until healthcare reform puts focus on funding the creation of more residency spots and providing better compensation for primary care, the shortage will continue, according to Dr. Paolo.
Read the full letter here.
More articles on integration and physician issues:
VA makes it official: APRNs win full practice authority in final rule
HHS to pay nurses' tuition at University of Scranton to help bolster rural healthcare workforce
Frustrated patient crashes truck through clinic doors