5 ms·
"Medical-school applicants basically need to have near-perfect GPA's and very high MCAT scores to get accepted to an accredited U.S. institution. Even among tha
by xyzzy4 10y ago
"Medical-school applicants basically need to have near-perfect GPA's and very high MCAT scores to get accepted to an accredited U.S. institution. Even among that much better qualified pool of applicants, only about 50 percent get accepted." http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/30/doctor-shortages-heres-the-real-culprit-commentary.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/30/doctor-shortages-heres-the-re...
- maxerickson 10y agoThere's medical school graduates that can't get into residency programs. The bottleneck in the US right now is residency slots.
- refurb 10y agoAnd the reason for that is that Medicare (CMS really) pays for all the residency slots. There is pressure to keep the Medicare budget from growing too fast which translates to slow/no growth in residency openings.
- maxerickson 10y agoThat's an explanation, not a reason. Providers with billions of revenue could easily afford to fund slots. They'd probably even benefit financially from it.
- rskar 10y agoThe words "reason" and "explanation" are nearly synonymous. (I went to http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary to be certain of this.) If anything, an explanation is built from a set of reasons. So refurb gave a reason for a bottleneck, and now we need to figure out why providers apparently aren't taking steps that address it.
- maxerickson 10y agoreason(1), explanation(2).
- cmdrfred 10y agoThe same reason IT guys oppose H1B visas? They like their earnings right where they are thank you.
- hx87 10y agoHmm...Why are there no privately funded residency slots?
- refurb 10y agoGood question. You'd think private hospitals could use it to recruit full time physicians (i.e. we'll pay for your residency, but you need to stick around for X years as employee). I don't know enough about how hospitals operate to understand why that's a good/bad idea.
- amalag 10y agoI just found out that because of this bottleneck foreign trained doctors who are otherwise completely qualified and have taken all tests to transfer qualifications cannot get residencies. I know of a foreign trained doctor who has been waiting 15 years. He has been doing EKG monitoring while he has been waiting. All residency slots naturally go to US medical school graduates.