Economic and demographic trends signal an impending physician shortage.

"An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told": another look at health spending and the supply of physicians.

Claims that the current physician resource shortage is due to the reduced work effort of physicians are misleading and ignore important trends, namely the demographic changes within the profession, the growth in non-physician spending that has outpaced spending on physicians and the relative decline in spending on physician services over the past 20 years. Such data make it difficult to support...

Impending physician shortage needs decisive remediation.

Does having more physicians lead to better health system performance?

THE US HEALTH SYSTEM FACES ONGOING CHALLENGES in addressing its shortcomings in access and quality. 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”: the physician workforce s...

Trends in Pathology Graduate Medical Education Programs and Positions, 2001 to 2017

The US medical workforce is facing an impending physician shortage. This shortage holds special concern for pathologists, as many senior practitioners are set to retire in the coming years. Indeed, studies indicate a "pathologist gap" may grow through 2030. As such, it is important to understand current and future trends in US pathology. One key factor is graduate medical education. In this stu...

There's a shortage of specialists: is anyone listening?

The author critiques the long-standing belief that there will be too many physicians, particularly specialists, a view put forth by the Bureau of Health Professions and the Council on Graduate Medical Education in the 1990s and held by many medical organizations, including the Association of American Medical Colleges. He cites his own research, which predicts, to the contrary, that the United S...