20070620 Shortage of Doctors Affects Rural US AP

Shortage of Doctors Affects Rural U.S.

Jul 20, 2007 By CHRIS TALBOTT, AP

GREENWOOD, Miss. - A national shortage of doctors is hitting poor places the hardest, and efforts to bring in foreign physicians to fill the gap are running into a knot of restrictions from the war on terror and the immigration debate.

Doctors recruited from places such as India, the Philippines and sub-Saharan Africa to work in underserved areas like the Mississippi Delta and the lonesome West already face an arduous and expensive gauntlet of agencies, professional tests and background checks to secure work papers and permanent residency.

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The government estimates that more than 35 million Americans live in underserved areas, and it would take 16,000 doctors to immediately fill that need, according to the American Medical Association. And the gap is expected to widen dramatically over the next several years, reaching 24,000 in 2020 by one government estimate. A 2005 study in the journal Health Affairs said it could hit an astonishing 200,000 by then, based on a rising population and an aging work force.

The rest of the article extensively explores the challenge of the doctor shortage in chronically underserved areas. Read the rest here: Shortage of Doctors Affects Rural U.S.

Related: Vital Need for Foreign Docs

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