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发信人: benpu (随性而安-Think or Sink), 信区: Medicalpractice
标 题: Enrollment in MD, DO Schools Hits New Highs
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Fri Oct 25 08:10:55 2013, 美东)
Enrollment in MD, DO Schools Hits New Highs
Published: Oct 24, 2013
By David Pittman, Washington Correspondent, MedPage Today
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WASHINGTON -- Medical school applications and enrollment reached record
highs this year as organized medicine's cries for more funding for residency
slots continued with little response from Congress.
The number of first-year medical students exceeded 20,000 for the first time
in 2013, reaching 20,055, the Association of American Medical Colleges (
AAMC) said Thursday in its annual report on medical school enrollment and
applications.
Meanwhile, first-year student enrollment at osteopathic medical colleges
increased 11.1% in 2013, to 6,449, according to the American Association of
Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM).
The two organizations increased their pleas for Congress to provide more
money for graduate medical education and funding residency training slots to
handle the newly minted doctors.
"We think, that as much as we see gridlock in Washington, that is something
that we need to attend to sooner rather than later,"Atul Grover, MD, PhD,
chief public policy officer at AAMC, said during a congressional briefing
Thursday.
First-time medical school enrollment jumped 2.8% this year and is up 21.6%
since 2002, according to the AAMC. The group attributed the increase to four
medical schools opening their doors this year and an additional 14
increasing their class sizes by more than 10%.
Total medical school applications are up 6.1% to 48,014, this year while
first-time applicants have grown 5.8%, the AAMC said. First-time female
applicants increased 6.9%, after remaining flat in 2012. Hispanics
attendance at medical schools increased 5.5%.
Furthermore, total enrollment at osteopathic medical schools increased to 4.
9% over 2012, growing to more than 22,000 students. New osteopathic medical
schools opened in the last year in Alabama, North Carolina, and Indiana.
"Because large numbers of new osteopathic physicians become primary care
physicians, often in rural and underserved areas, it is evident that the
osteopathic medical profession will help the nation alleviate a primary care
physician crisis," Stephen Shannon, DO, MPH, AACOM president and chief
executive, said in a statement. "And colleges of osteopathic medicine are
expanding and increasing to meet this demand."
But the increase in enrollment will mean little in the fight to ease the
nation's physician shortage unless teaching hospitals have a greater ability
to train physicians, the AAMC and AACOM said. The AAMC projects a shortage
of more than 90,000 doctors by 2020.
"Unless Congress lifts the 16-year-old cap on federal support for residency
training, we will still face a shortfall of physicians across dozens of
specialties," AAMC President and Chief Executive Darrell Kirch, MD, said in
a release. "Students are doing their part by applying to medical school in
record numbers. Medical schools are doing their part by expanding enrollment
. Now Congress needs to do its part and act without delay to expand
residency training to ensure that everyone who needs a doctor has access to
one."
The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 limited the number of residencies Medicare
would support. But seeing the pending shortage of physicians coming, the
AAMC pleaded with its members in 2006 to increase its enrollment, which was
mostly flat between 1980 and 2006.
While medical schools have complied, the number of residency training
positions has remained the same. Nearly 1,000 graduates initially were
unmatched last year, a number that was eventually whittled down to 520.
"We should probably be training another 4,000 doctors per year," Grover said.
With 26,504 medical students starting in 2013 between osteopathic and
allopathic medical schools, only 26,392 first-year residency slots existed
in 2013, Grover said.
"We hear from our educators and our teaching hospitals the way that clinical
revenues have been compressed, they don't have the resources for additional
positions anymore," he added.
Legislation is pending in both chambers -- H.R. 1201 and S. 577 -- that
would increase the number of residency slots Medicare would support by 15,
000 over 5 years. The legislation would cost about $9 billion over 10 years,
Grover said.
It costs about $145,000 a year to train a physician, but Medicare supports
only about $3.2 billion annually of the roughly $15 billion it takes to
train physicians nationwide.
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