Becker's Healthcare May 14, 2024
1. Healthcare has a simple math problem.
The population of the United States is more than 334 million people, and we have 1.1 million active physicians. We are hyper short on primary care physicians and specialists, with one of the lower counts of physicians per capita compared to other developed nations. This one problem spills over to affect most everything else in the industry. The U.S. has one of the lengthiest and most expensive medical school systems in the world that has not kept up with demand nor expanded the number of students it trains, producing about 28,000 graduates per year with about 20,000 MDs and about 8,000 DOs. Additionally, more physicians are retiring or transitioning to part-time practice at...