Medscape September 24, 2021
A bottleneck in the US physician training and education pipeline limits entry into residency programs and ultimately hampers provider supply and access to care, according to a new report.
The analysis, by nonpartisan think tank Niskanen Center, found that the US has “substantially fewer” physicians per capita than other developed countries. For example, the US has just 3.1 primary care physicians (PCPs) per 10,000 people compared with 7.6 and 13.0 PCPs per capita in the United Kingdom and Canada, respectively.
These shortages encourage reliance on “high-intensity, low-access care,” like the emergency room, a shift that is “harmful because provision of the most basic medical services is generally recognized to have the greatest marginal impact on population-level health.”
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