Physician Supply Revisited

Physician supply and breast cancer survival.

BACKGROUND This study tested the hypothesis that physician supply thresholds are associated with breast cancer survival in Ontario. METHODS The 5-year survival of 17,820 female breast cancer patients diagnosed between 1995 and 1997 was surveilled until 2003 for all-cause mortality. Physician supply densities in 1991 and 2001 were computed for 49 Ontario regions. RESULTS There were independe...

Broadening the scope of physician supply projections.

Will minority physician supply meet U.S. needs?

We project the future racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. physician workforce under different assumptions. Our projections show that reaching racial and ethnic population parity with a managed care-based requirement of 218 physicians per 100,000 population would require the number of first-year residents to roughly double for Hispanic and black physicians, triple for Native American physi...

Finding equilibrium in U.S. physician supply.

One essential component of health system reform is to bring the number of physicians in line with the needs of the population. The physician supply policies of prepaid group practice health maintenance organizations have been cited as one model to achieve this goal. Planning for physician supply should be an explicit public-sector activity and should not be left to the private sector, because s...

Trends in physician supply and population growth.

The physician workforce has steadily grown faster than the U.S. population over the past 30 years, context that is often absent in conversations anticipating physician scarcity. Policy makers addressing future physician shortages should also direct resources to ensure specialty and geographic distribution that best serves population health .