Concern grows over US health workforce shortage: “We don’t have enough doctors”

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CNN
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There is growing concern among some US lawmakers about the nation’s continuing shortage of healthcare workers, and leaders at historically black medical schools are calling for more funding to train a more diverse workforce.

Starting Monday, in areas where a shortage of health personnel has been identified, the United States needs more than 17,000 additional primary care physicians, 12,000 dental health professionals and 8,200 mental health professionals, according to data from the Health Resources and Services Administration. Those numbers are based on data HRSA receives from state offices and health departments.

“We don’t have anywhere near the kind of workforce, health care workforce, that we need,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told CNN on Friday. “We don’t have enough doctors. We don’t have enough nurses. We don’t have enough psychologists or addiction counselors. We don’t have enough pharmacists.”

The heads of historically black medical schools met with Sanders at a panel discussion at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta on Friday to discuss the nation’s health care workforce shortage.

Healthcare Staff Shortage Is “Most Acute” in Black and Latino Communities; the black community constitutes 13% of the US population, but only 5.7% of American doctors are blacksaid Sanders, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

“What we are trying to do in this committee, in our Health, Education, Labor Committee, is to grow the health care workforce and put a special emphasis on the needs to grow more doctors, nurses, psychologists, et cetera, blacks”. Sanders said.

At Friday’s roundtable, leaders from the Morehouse School of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, Howard University and Charles R. Drew University called for more resources and opportunities to be allocated to their institutions to help grow the workforce at incoming healthcare into the nation.

“The allocation of resources and opportunities is important for us to increase capacity and scholarships and programming to help support these students as they enroll,” Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, president of the School of Morehouse Medicine.

“But also, the other 150-plus medical schools, beyond our four historically black medical schools, owe it to the country to increase the diversity of the students they train,” Rice said, adding that having a caring workforce Health care that reflects the communities served helps reduce the health disparities seen in the United States.

Historically, black medical schools are “the backbone for training black physicians in this country,” Dr. Hugh Mighty, Howard University’s senior vice president of health affairs, said at Friday’s event. “As the problem of the shortage of African-American doctors increases, within the general context of medical personnel shortages, many communities in need will continue to be underserved.”

TO new study commissioned by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities estimates that the economic burden of health inequalities in the United States has cost the nation billions of dollars. Such inequities are illustrated in how Black and Latino communities tend to have higher rates of serious health outcomes, such as maternal deaths, certain chronic diseases, and infectious diseases.

The researchers, from Johns Hopkins University and other institutions, looked at excess health care spending, death records and other US data on labor market productivity lost to health reasons.

The researchers found that, in 2018, the economic burden of health disparities for racial and ethnic minority communities in the United States was as much as $451 billion, and the economic burden of health disparities for adults without a college degree four years was up to $978 billion.

“These findings provide a clear and important message to health care leaders, public health officials, and state and federal policymakers: The economic magnitude of health disparities in the US is staggeringly high,” said Dr. Rishi Wadhera and Issa Dahabreh, both of Harvard University, wrote in an editorial accompanying the new study in JAMA.

The Covid-19 pandemic “pulled back the curtain” on health inequities, such as premature death and others, Rice said, and “we saw a disproportionate burden” on some communities.

“We saw a higher death rate in the Black and Latino communities due to access and fear and many other factors, including what we recognize as racism and unconscious bias,” Rice said.

“We needed more doctors, more healthcare providers. So, we already know that when we project to 2050, we have a significant shortage of doctors due to the fact that we can’t educate and train enough health professionals fast enough,” he said. “We cannot depend only on doctors. We have to rely on a team approach.”

He added that the nation’s shortage of health workers leaves the country ill-prepared to respond to future pandemics.

The United States is projected to face a shortage of up to 124,000 doctors by 2034 as demand outstrips supply, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

The labor shortage means we are “really not prepared” for another pandemic, Sanders said.

“We don’t have the public health infrastructure that we need on a state-by-state basis. We probably don’t have the doctors and nurses we need,” Sanders said. “So what we’re trying to do now is introduce legislation that will create more doctors and more nurses, more dentists, because dental care is a major crisis in America.”

In March, Bill McBride, executive director of the National Governors Association, wrote a letter Sanders and Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy detailing the “root causes” of the health care workforce shortage and possible ways some states hope to address the crisis.

“Governors have taken innovative steps to address the health care workforce shortages facing their states and territories by boosting hiring efforts, relaxing licensing requirements, expanding training programs, and increasing provider pay,” he wrote. McBride.

“The shortage of healthcare workers is not a new challenge, it has only worsened in the last three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Exhaustion and stress have only exacerbated this problem,” she wrote. “The retirement and aging of an entire generation are front and center in the health workforce shortage, which hits rural communities especially hard.”