America is in need of additional doctors! As the American population continues to grow and age so too will the strain on an already burdened healthcare system. Right now, there are countless medically underserved communities where clinics and hospitals struggle to provide adequate healthcare due to a scarcity of physicians, leaving a myriad of Americans unable to see a physician and sometimes having to travel up to 3 hours to be seen at a medical facility. This is a crisis that will only continue to worsen; according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the American public will face a shortage of doctors to the tune of 122,000 by the year 2032 (1).

It’s inexcusable that when there is such a dire need for more physicians, every year we have thousands of medical graduates who do not secure a residency position and go without postgraduate medical training. According the 2019 Main Residency Match, 7,826 eligible first year applicants went without a residency position (2). Why are so many medical graduates going without postgraduate training? This is largely due to the Balanced Budget Refinement Act of 1997 that put a restriction on the amount Medicaid-funded residency positions (3).

What’s the solution? We need to train more doctors by increasing medical residency positions. We need Congress to act by passing the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act (H.R. 1763/S. 348). This bill would increase the number of Medicare-funded residency positions and provide an additional 15,000 positions over the course of 5 years (4). Increasing the amount of US trained doctors would help alleviate the burden of physician shortages.

https://www.aamc.org/system/files/2019-09/Resident-physician-shortage-reduction-act-20190206.pdf

Sign this petition and click the link to read AAMCs take on the issue and lets do this!

Sincerely,

MDs4Change:  The Foundation for Addressing Physician Shortage

References:

1.     https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/press-releases/new-findings-confirm-predictions-physician-shortage

2.      National Resident Matching Program, Results and Data: 2019 Main Residency Match. National Resident Matching Program, Washington, 2019.

3.     https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK248024/

4.     https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/348