Quite possibly so.
An article Monday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution contained some sobering numbers. This past spring, Georgia medical schools graduated 385 students. Of those, 20 chose to go into family medicine. Even more concerning, only two of those 20 stayed in Georgia to pursue family medicine residencies.
Georgia needs more. Of the state’s 159 counties, 58 are designated primary-care health professional shortage areas, which means there is less than one doctor for every 3,500 people. That shortage affects 1.5 million Georgians.
While Georgia is the nation’s ninth most populace state, it ranks No. 39 in doctors per capita.
According to the AJC report, Georgia needs 259 more doctors located in underserved areas to eliminate the “official” shortage. But the state needs even more doctors — another 421 — in underserved areas to bring the ratio to the ideal 1:2,000.
The problem is the situation isn’t unique to our state. The University of Missouri School of Medicine sees that national trend that, in 17 years, would leave the United States needing an additional 44,000 primary-care doctors to meet Americans’ needs.
The result is that students from outside the United States now comprise 40 percent of family medical residencies in the United States. The AJC report noted that Atlanta Medical Center interviewed 70 people this year for its family-medicine residency program — with only four applicants who were students in Georgia schools.
It’s not hard to see why family practice isn’t as popular. Family doctors tend to make less money than their specialist colleagues, and their practices are generally viewed as more time-consuming. Nationally, general practitioners double the number of office visits that specialists have.
When the average graduate from the Medical College of Georgia who has debt when entering residency has $100,000 of it, it’s easy to see where earning potential can be a deciding factor in deciding a specialty.
The state hasn’t exactly been watching this train coming at it without acting. Doctors can reduce $25,000 in debt per year for up to four years by working in counties with populations under 35,000, and Medical College of Georgia is attempting to add campuses in areas outside Augusta where it is located. The Legislature this year upped state spending on family medicine residency programs by more than a half-million dollars. A partnership between Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital and MCG is bringing 10-12 third- and fourth-year medical students on rotation in Albany, a number officials hope to soon push to 30 per year.
Georgia, however, faces a real medical provider crisis — a shortage of 2,500 doctors in the next 12 years. More must be done by our local, state and national leaders to treat aggressively this health condition. For many Georgians both today and tomorrow, it is literally a life or death situation.
— The Albany Herald Editorial Board