Physician workforce shortages impede CHC expansion plans

When President Bush articulated his plan to expand the capacity of community health centers to care for underserved communities, a group of physicians and researchers in Washington state asked who would staff these clinics. What they found is more evidence that cuts to federal funding for medical education in primary care threaten our country’s health care system. Many CHCs have difficulty recruiting clinic staffs, particularly for full-time positions to be filled by family physicians, they report in a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study is called “Shortages of Medical Personnel at Community Health Centers: Implications for Planned Expansion.”

The researchers sent questionnaires to each of the 846 federal funded CHCs across the country to find out how many of the clinics are understaffed, how they recruit and if barriers exist to their recruitment. They found that among approximately 670 clinics that responded, there are 428 vacant positions for family physicians. The study breaks down the data by region and by socio-economic status, and not surprisingly, clinics in rural areas have a harder time filling positions.

“A national decision to invest further in CHCs has occurred during a period when access to health care in the United States is limited for more people than ever before in the country's history,” according to the study.

The authors conclude that physician workforce shortages in primary care specialties could inhibit the administration’s plans for that investment. To add insult to injury, the president’s 2007 budget slashes funding for primary care training programs under Title VII of the Public Health Service Act, doing little to help future workforce problems. The number of students interested in primary care has already decreased 52 percent in the last seven years. Without funding to the programs that help pay for the training of family physicians, fewer medical students will choose the increasingly important specialty of family medicine, and physician vacancies in CHCs will continue to worsen.

Resources:

Read AAFP's coverage of JAMA's study

The full JAMA article may only be read by subscribers, but the abstract provides a good outline of the study.