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High Five
Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The Association of American Medical Colleges is predicting a shortage of 150,000 doctors over the next 15 years.

And Henry Veldman, regional vice president of PeaceHealth Medical Group in Eugene, predicts that 300,000 of the 800,000 licensed physicians in America will retire within the next five years or so.

More patients and fewer doctors could lead to longer wait times and shorter doctor visits.

Veldman says with millions of more people having insurance under recently passed health care reform, access will be even harder. He says PeaceHealth is looking into "team-based" medicine. "So you have the physician, you have some nurses, you have health coaches and we see that as a way to combat the coming physician shortage," he says.

Read the full story at KATU.com.
 
BELOW: Current talk on Twitter on this topic
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    Lisa
    0 #1 Another day living in dreamland — Lisa 2010-04-20 12:21:24
    Is anyone suprised? Oregon has notoriously low Medicare reimbursement rates. Medicaid is even worse. As a state with a struggling economy, high unemployment and no tort reform, it is not a very friendly place for a doctor to establish or maintain a practice.

    The liberal theory that if you give everyone "access" to healthcare providers via government run healthcare reimbursement products, this will magically create enough doctors is the usual "life in dreamland" approach to real life problems.

    Oh and now we've increased taxes making it even more expensive for doctors to practice. Most of them are in fact small businessmen as well as physicians. They see escalating costs of practice and reductions in fees. No wonder few are entering practice in Oregon and those who are here are retiring early.
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