I don’t think so.
As The Happy Hospitalist observes, many being practicing in rural areas to fulfill visa requirements, then leave to pursue specialty training programs.
As long as the same incentives exist that results in the lifestyle and salary disparity between primary care and specialists, both foreign physicians and mid-level providers will join the growing ranks of American-born doctors desiring to be specialists.
Related posts:
- Foreign medical graduates and mid-levels will provide the majority of tomorrow’s primary care
- Foreign doctors and primary care
- Primary care is supported by international medical graduates
- Primary care
- Can we rely on IMGs to help with the primary care shortage?
- Why nurse practitioners and physician assistants will not solve the primary care shortage
- Foreign doctors and US health care
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I understand that in the UK the primary care physicians (Gatekeepers, I think they’re called) are given a pretty hefty bonus each year for keeping their patients healthy. This seems like a pretty effective way of decreasing the income disparity between the two groups.
And this is really only one example of all the ways our healthcare system can learn from other countries. I only wish we weren’t so stubborn…
It is one thing to import cheap foreign labor to pull the weeks and clean the toilet. This is quite another thing and is not a solution, but rather a sign of a serious problem that needs a solution.
Sheesh. FMG’s, IMG’s, whatever you’re calling them these days…..they just reflect the unpopularity of a particular field of medicine. The foreign docs want to be in the United States, and they would rather be an American training in an unpopular specialty than a foreigner in his/her home country doing a more popular thing.
Fine.
But the foreign doc is no different from the American. If small-town America does not appeal to the American doctor from Cleveland, it will not appeal to the Pakistani or Iranian or Filipino doctor either. In fact, it will likely be less appealing.
The foreign doc will be out of the little town FP practice as quick as the American……maybe even quicker.
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