By Laura Eastes The Southwest Medical Center administration announced two new doctors joining the staff this spring and summer, but despite the additions, there is a need for many more. Brandi Boller will open her family practice in May. William Valdez, an internal medicine physician, will join SWMC in July. “Right now our one critical issue is the shortage of doctors,” said SWMC President Norm Lambert. “Everyday we hear of patients leaving town to find a doctor. Participially for a primary care doctor. I don’t think it always use to be that way.” Read More…

MEDICINE is one of those jobs where you never stop learning, but Dr Rust Theron, who works at a private hospital in the mainly Afrikaans suburb of Durbanville, never expected his would include learning Tamil. Theron has been working with nurses recruited from southern India for the past two-and-a-half years, after JSE-listed group Medi- Clinic decided to import staff from the region to counter the shortage of highly skilled theatre and intensive care unit nurses in the Western Cape. Read More…

By Gill Plimmer Healthcare Locums, the UK’s largest supplier of short-term healthcare professionals, is poised to benefit from rising demand for nurses in the US should Congress pass Barack Obama’s health reform bill. More than 1.2m new nurses are needed in the US by 2014 – a shortage that could be exacerbated if a potential 46m people gain access to the healthcare system for the first time. Kate Bleasdale, founder and vice-chairman of Healthcare Locums, which supplies doctors, social workers and other health professionals, said it was an “exciting opportunity”....

By AARON EDLIN AND DANA P. GOLDMAN Aaron Edlin is a law and economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Dana Goldman is a pharmacy and public policy professor and the director of the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California. Whenever we call our physicians, we can’t get in to see them for several months. Our colleagues have a similar experience. This raises a simple question: Who is going to treat the approximately 30 million newly insured? Read More…

Official announcement have confirmed that the Alberta Government will be spending as much as $8 Million in order to effectively direct more graduates of medical school towards family medicine, where the state is facing a large-scale and prevailing shortage of doctors. Announced on Thursday, the funds would be invested into University of Calgary’s Family Medicine Department, and these would help train more medical students and doctors in family medicine, create as many as 5 new faculty posts and support research. Read More…

Happy New Year from Medcare Provider

By: The Citizen staff report ALBANY – A survey conducted by the Healthcare Association of New York State (HANYS) shows that New York’s physician shortage is still growing and will likely worsen. The report found that New York’s physicians are aging and the recruits to replace the older physicians are not in place, leading to a current shortage as well as the future prospects that the physician supply will not meet demand. “The shortage of physicians, nurses and other health care workers continue to threaten access to care and no health care reform effort can succeed without...

By: Morgan Lewis Jr In a survey of 285 hospital chief executive officers, 95 percent report there is a shortage of physicians in the U.S. and 91 percent believe there is a shortage of nurses, according to national staffing company AMN Healthcare. Despite the economic downturn increasing physician retention, more than 24 percent of hospital CEOs report the economy had caused them to increase physician recruiting efforts over the last six months, while 64 percent said recruiting efforts over the last six months had not changed. Read More…

PRIMARY CARE: State considers help for more medical students; paying physicians to move north. By ROSEMARY SHINOHARA Citing a continuing shortage of primary care doctors in Alaska, a state commission recommends the state spend considerably more money to train new doctors and lure more already-qualified doctors to the state. Exactly how many primary care physicians Alaska needs isn’t clear, but it’s certain we need more, said Dr. Ward Hurlburt, chief medical officer for the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services and chair of the Alaska Health Care Commission, which made the...

CNN reports that five years ago “roughly half the doctors leaving medical school entered the work force as primary-care physicians; just 20 percent of current medical students are planning to work in primary care.” The shortage is acute in rural areas, CNN reports. Doctors are also following the health reform proceedings in Washington, with some saying the bills will affect primary care doctors — with grants and incentives to go into the field — less than specialists, who could see their practices and reimbursement change. Read More…