This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on ISI (7)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Medical Practice  • Health Policy  • Medical Education  • Medical Practice, Other  • Quality of Care  • Quality of Care, Other  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

David C. Goodman, MD, MS; Kevin Grumbach, MD

JAMA. 2008;299(3):335-337.

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

The US health system faces ongoing challenges in addressing its shortcomings in access and quality.¹ Against a foreground of uneven and fragmented care lies a bleak background of unrelentingly accelerating costs. Although the problems of quality and costs are long-standing, several organizations have recently asserted that there is a new impending health care "tragedy"²: the physician workforce shortage. In contrast to the extensively documented problems of quality and affordability, the inference of a physician shortage rests on a less robust set of analyses. Assertions of a physician shortage warrant a critical examination because more physicians will compete for new resources against already well-documented health system needs.

From Surplus to Shortage

Ten years ago, the consensus was that there were too many physicians, particularly specialists, in the United States. In the 1990s, the Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME) promoted policies to reduce the overall number . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Author Affiliations: Center for Health Policy Research, Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, New Hampshire (Dr Goodman); Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of California, San Francisco (Dr Grumbach).

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

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Ambulatory Care Provided by Office-Based Specialists in the United States
Valderas et al.
Ann Fam Med 2009;7:104-111.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Health Workforce Planning and Medical Student Career Choice--Reply
Goodman
JAMA 2009;301:826-826.
FULL TEXT  

The Feminization of Medicine and Population Health
Phillips and Austin
JAMA 2009;301:863-864.
FULL TEXT  

States With More Physicians Have Better-Quality Health Care
Cooper
Health Aff (Millwood) 2009;28:w91-w102.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Confronting the Complexity of the Physician Workforce Equation
Kirch and Vernon
JAMA 2008;299:2680-2682.
FULL TEXT  

Grassroots Activism and the Pursuit of an Expanded Physician Supply
Iglehart
NEJM 2008;358:1741-1749.
FULL TEXT  

Osteopathic Medical Education in 2008: Course Corrections and New Horizons
Shannon
JAOA: Journal of the American Osteopathic Association 2008;108:100-101.
FULL TEXT