Primary care is supported by international medical graduates

SHOCKING NEWS: “Fewer American doctors are focusing on primary care, but the decline is being covered by physicians from other countries . . .

. . . Overall growth in the number of primary-care physicians “has been totally due to the number of international medical students training in America,” Sanders said. ‘We are increasingly dependent on international medical school graduates to meet our needs. Currently, one in four new physicians in the U.S. is an international medical graduate.’”

Well, not a surprise to regular readers here. How long can IMGs continue prop up our sagging primary care fortunes?

Dr. A also comments on the piece.

Comments

Dr. A
Thanks for the link!
Anonymous
IMGs could support primary care for while if you take into account the IMGs migration from UK and the ones who will bypass the UK and come to the US instead:
http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/uk-closes-its-doors-to-foreign-doctors.html
Health Punk
1. Duh. Our lower reimbursements for primary care still lead to a relatively higher income for IMGs.
2. Great post, Dr. A.
3. No one is talking about the ethics of this. Our underfunding and thus undersupply of primary care physicians is depleting the critical primary care need in other countries. Read the article at:
http://www.annfammed.org/cgi/content/full/5/6/DC1
One could argue that our poor choices are inadvertently affecting the rest of the world.
Anyway, got to run. We’re goin’ to Wal-Mart for a while, then to Applebee’s for dinner.
Anonymous
IMG’s are just a marker for the relative undesirability of a specialty or a location. If it were desirable, US citizens would be there first.
But overall, IMG’s have practice demographics that mirror US graduates, and specialize a little more than US graduates. To the extent that you see IMG’s in rural settings, they’re more likely to be in J-1 positions. As soon as they’ve fulfilled their J-1 requirements, they head for the lucrative suburbs as fast as US grads, if not faster.
And that’s not trying to be insulting to IMG’s. I’d do the same if I were in their shoes. Just saying that IMG’s aren’t the answer to access problems in rural America. You want docs to practice in rural America, you select medical students who are from those areas, and you pay them adequately, to make it worthwhile to go back. Instead, we pay them less.
Anonymous
Why is everyone so hung up on rural healthcare? There is no need for income redistribution to rural docs. Nobody else makes more money working in rural locales so why should one expect a doc in the country to earn the same as a doc in the big city? Seems to me opportunity for all is mostly in major urban centers, that is where most people live, and that is where our doctors and healthcare facilities should be concentrated. Few people including doctors really care to take the road less traveled by choice and that is rational.

Primary care is supported by international medical graduates

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