Every year I hear about qualified premeds not getting into med school because there are so few spots. Why are qualified people being turned away if there’s a worsening doctor shortage in the US?
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Medical student here. The large gatekeeper is the number or residency training spots. There are more medical students than residency spots already so schools are hesitant to accept more students. Every year many physicians are unable to get a residency, and without that they basically cannot practice medicinez
They increased the number of spaces at medical schools, so getting into a medical school is no longer the bottleneck.
The bottleneck is more places to do a residency, which they haven’t increased, so every year there are ~1000 more folks that have graduated medical school, that can’t get a residency.
In the US, the medical profession operates like a guild in economic and regulatory terms. Although there are complex reasons and policies for why this is so, the bottom line is that the supply of physicians is artificially constrained resulting in higher costs with poorer outcomes for patients. It is one of many failures in US health care policy that could be fixed if we had the will to do so.
As others have said, CMS is the limiting factor. Restricted residency slots means no medical school wants to over expand it’s class size and risk students graduating without matching into residency i.e. having an MD but never being able to practice medicine.
Expanding resdiency slots requires a literal act of congress. 1000 or so were added last year which was the first expansion in a while.
nursing programs are the same way, I remember one of my ex’s was stressing about some test because there were limited spots for the nursing program and they tended to only take the top testers.
It’s deeper than controlling the supply of doctors. There are less doctors willing to train new doctors as the funds to pay for that were cut off. I will add that same organization controls the payments for procedures and diagnostic testing
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