Physician Shortage: Disappearing Docs
by Pamela Moore

Perry Farb is, no doubt, a very good family-practice physician. Still, as he completed his training, he was astounded by the number of “faxes and e-mails [he received] daily for months,” alerting him to job opportunities.

Farb ended up at Fallon Clinic in Boston. Chief Medical Officer Marc Greenwald was happy to have him. Just before Greenwald started his job two and a half years ago, the group had 23 openings and could fill only 11 of them.

It’s a new world for those trying to recruit. The long-rumored physician shortage is upon us and likely to worsen. The newly formed Council on Physician and Nurse Supply says the United States may lack as many as 200,000 needed physicians (and 800,000 nurses) by 2020. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts there will be 212,000 physician openings by 2014 due to growth and net replacement of retiring physicians. That number represents more than 25 percent of the current physician work force. And this is in a country whose population continues to grow. The American Medical Association (AMA) says that as the U.S. population rose 31 percent between 1980 and 2003, its number of medical school graduates remained static.