California faces two intertwining problems about to get more acute: not enough family practice physicians and not enough physicians treating Medi-Cal patients.
How should California deal with these two shortages?
Government officials estimate the country is about 16,000 primary care physicians short of what’s needed now. And, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the physician shortage will grow to 125,000 by 2025.
For California’s low-income population, the family physician shortage is exacerbated by the scarcity of physicians willing to treat Medi-Cal patients. According to a UC-San Francisco survey, almost all physicians in California are accepting new patients (90%) and most are accepting new Medicare patients (78%), but far fewer are willing to take on new Medi-Cal patients (57%).
Both of these shortages are expected be become more problematic in the next several years as health care reform brings millions of formerly uninsured people into the equation. Almost seven million people are covered now by Medi-Cal and that number will grow by as much as 40%, according to some estimates, when new eligibility rules go into effect in 2014.
We asked stakeholders:
- What can be done to encourage more family physicians to practice in California?
- What can be done to encourage more physician participation in Medi-Cal?
- If the shortages are not adequately addressed as 2014 approaches, what options should be explored?
We got responses from:
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