This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Medical Practice  • Medical Practice, Other  • Quality of Care  • Quality of Care, Other  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

In Reply: In response to Drs Sharpe, Petti, Starfield, and Forrest, we did not request information about specific specialties, but rather reported those specialties that the respondents spontaneously named. Respondents often referred to shortages of "specialists" or "surgical specialists" or "primary care physicians" without naming specific specialties. Those designations may have included hospitalists, child psychiatrists, and others not specifically cited in our article. Shortages were reported in a wide range of specialties, including primary care, although the deficiencies in primary care did not appear to be as pressing as in many of the non–primary care specialties. In pointing out that the reported shortages were most profound in the non–primary care specialties, we were merely summarizing the data.

In response to Starfield and Forrest, we believe that the deans and medical society officials who were surveyed are well positioned to understand broad aspects of the current medical market place. Their important . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Richard A. Cooper, MD
Health Policy Institute
Medical College of Wisconsin
Milwaukee

Steven A. Wartman, MD, PhD
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLES

Perceptions of Physician Shortages
Bradley A. Sharpe
JAMA. 2004;291(14):1695-1696.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Perceptions of Physician Shortages
Theodore A. Petti
JAMA. 2004;291(14):1696.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Perceptions of Physician Shortages
Barbara Starfield and Christopher B. Forrest
JAMA. 2004;291(14):1696.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Perceptions of Medical School Deans and State Medical Society Executives About Physician Supply
Richard A. Cooper, Sandra J. Stoflet, and Steven A. Wartman
JAMA. 2003;290(22):2992-2995.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT