As a resident physician at UT College of Medicine Chattanooga, I know first-hand the impact Medicare financing for Graduate Medical Education has on physician education and access to care for patients in our community and communities all over the country. GME funding provides medical school graduates the opportunity to complete the required years of clinical residency training necessary to obtain a medical license. During this clinical training, residents provide needed care for at least one out of every five hospitalized patients, including our seniors, veterans and patients in underserved communities. In the process of taking care of these patients we are able to learn and grow into competent and compassionate physicians. In the United States, in order to sit for licensing examinations physicians must complete a GME-funded residency program.
With a growing demand for health care services, cuts to federal funding for physician residency programs will only worsen physician shortages across the country. Workforce experts predict a physician shortage of 62,900 as soon as this year that will increase to 130,000 by 2025. This shortage increases demand on our health care delivery system as more seniors begin to join the Medicare program and newly insured Americans seek access to care. Cutting funding to the very programs that train new physicians is nonsensical in the context of worsening shortages of care providers.
I embrace the multidisciplinary nature of medicine today. There is nothing better than having a team of professionals including pharmacists, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and students to bring ideas to the table and collaborate on how to best take care of a patient. However, increasing the number of non-physician providers without also increasing the number of physicians responsible for the supervision of NPPs will only further stress the system, taking physicians away from patient care and placing them in a managerial position where their days are spent more in chart review than in direct patient care.
Congress can help alleviate this problem and protect our most vulnerable patients by retaining Medicare support and federal funding for GME. A healthy nation must maintain access to care for patients and address physician shortages by preserving funding for physician residency programs.
If you've ever waited two months to get in to see a physician and don't want that wait time extended even further; if you want more well-trained physicians, not less; if you support coupling the training of young physicians with taking care of those who would otherwise not have access to care. Vote to #saveGME.
Jensen Hyde, MD
Internal Medicine Resident
University of Tennessee College of Medicine, Chattanooga
President, UT-Erlanger House Staff Association
Board Member, Chattanooga Hamilton County Medical Society