Medical Xpress October 18, 2024
Finding sound strategies to meet the growing demand for primary care, especially in underserved areas, is an ongoing public health challenge among policymakers. A new study led by the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute suggests that policy interventions aimed at recruiting physicians to specialize in primary care, especially to practice in underserved areas, should be tailored to the citizenship status of international medical graduates (IMGs).
The findings are published October 14 in Journal of General Internal Medicine.
IMGs, or those who graduated from a medical school located outside the U.S. and Canada, now make up a quarter of all licensed physicians in the U.S. This population has been shown to specialize in primary care at a higher rate than U.S....