Medical school applications and enrollment reached record
highs this year as organized medicine's cries for more funding for residency
slots continued with little response from Congress.
The number of first-year medical students exceeded 20,000 for
the first time in 2013, reaching 20,055, the Association of American Medical
Colleges (AAMC) said Thursday in its annual report on medical school enrollment
and applications.
Meanwhile, first-year student enrollment at osteopathic
medical colleges increased 11.1% in 2013, to 6,449, according to the American
Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM).
The two organizations increased their pleas for Congress to
provide more money for graduate medical education and funding residency
training slots to handle the newly minted doctors.
"We think, that as much as we see gridlock in
Washington, that is something that we need to attend to sooner rather than
later,"Atul Grover, MD, PhD, chief public policy officer at AAMC, said
during a congressional briefing Thursday.
First-time medical school enrollment jumped 2.8% this year
and is up 21.6% since 2002, according to the AAMC. The group attributed the
increase to four medical schools opening their doors this year and an
additional 14 increasing their class sizes by more than 10%.
Total medical school applications are up 6.1% to 48,014, this
year while first-time applicants have grown 5.8%, the AAMC said. First-time
female applicants increased 6.9%, after remaining flat in 2012. Hispanics
attendance at medical schools increased 5.5%.
Furthermore, total enrollment at osteopathic medical schools
increased to 4.9% over 2012, growing to more than 22,000 students. New
osteopathic medical schools opened in the last year in Alabama, North Carolina,
and Indiana.
"Because large numbers of new osteopathic physicians
become primary care physicians, often in rural and underserved areas, it is
evident that the osteopathic medical profession will help the nation alleviate
a primary care physician crisis," Stephen Shannon, DO, MPH, AACOM
president and chief executive, said in a statement. "And colleges of
osteopathic medicine are expanding and increasing to meet this demand."
But the increase in enrollment will mean little in the fight
to ease the nation's physician shortage unless teaching hospitals have a
greater ability to train physicians, the AAMC and AACOM said. The AAMC projects
a shortage of more than 90,000 doctors by 2020.
"Unless Congress lifts the 16-year-old cap on federal
support for residency training, we will still face a shortfall of physicians
across dozens of specialties," AAMC President and Chief Executive Darrell
Kirch, MD, said in a release. "Students are doing their part by applying
to medical school in record numbers. Medical schools are doing their part by
expanding enrollment. Now Congress needs to do its part and act without delay
to expand residency training to ensure that everyone who needs a doctor has
access to one."
The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 limited the number of
residencies Medicare would support. But seeing the pending shortage of
physicians coming, the AAMC pleaded with its members in 2006 to increase its
enrollment, which was mostly flat between 1980 and 2006.
While medical schools have complied, the number of residency
training positions has remained the same. Nearly 1,000 graduates initially were
unmatched last year, a number that was eventually whittled down to 520.
"We should probably be training another 4,000 doctors
per year," Grover said.
With 26,504 medical students starting in 2013 between
osteopathic and allopathic medical schools, only 26,392 first-year residency
slots existed in 2013, Grover said.
"We hear from our educators and our teaching hospitals
the way that clinical revenues have been compressed, they don't have the
resources for additional positions anymore," he added.
Legislation is pending in both chambers -- H.R. 1201 and S.
577 -- that would increase the number of residency slots Medicare would support
by 15,000 over 5 years. The legislation would cost about $9 billion over 10
years, Grover said.
It costs about $145,000 a year to train a physician, but
Medicare supports only about $3.2 billion annually of the roughly $15 billion
it takes to train physicians nationwide.
Source: Med Page today
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