While the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act means as many as 30 million Americans could receive health insurance in the coming years, there is a growing concern those newly insured individuals will have difficulty finding a primary care physician because of widespread physician shortages, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The U.S. will be more than 60,000 physicians short by 2015, and that number could swell to 90,000 by 2020, according to estimates from the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Healthcare leaders hope provisions in the PPACA that provide incentives for medical students to become PCPs put a bandage on the physician shortage problem. Also, care-delivery reforms such as accountable care organizations could help take stress off the pool of primary care physicians who will start seeing millions of new patients nationwide, according to the report.
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The U.S. will be more than 60,000 physicians short by 2015, and that number could swell to 90,000 by 2020, according to estimates from the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Healthcare leaders hope provisions in the PPACA that provide incentives for medical students to become PCPs put a bandage on the physician shortage problem. Also, care-delivery reforms such as accountable care organizations could help take stress off the pool of primary care physicians who will start seeing millions of new patients nationwide, according to the report.
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