Concern about the growing physician shortage has led the Association of American Medical Colleges to recommend that enrollment in U.S. medical schools be increased 30% by 2015 instead of the 15% AAMC proposed in February 2005. Citing current population trends and physician retirement patterns, AAMC says the number of physicians will peak by about 2020 and then drop just as the baby boomers begin to reach age 75 if medical schools don’t accommodate 30% more students. The proposed expansion would increase the number of new MD students by 5,000 annually, and AAMC suggests that it be accomplished by boosting enrollment at existing schools and by creating new allopathic medical schools.
To accommodate additional U.S. MD graduates in teaching hospital residency training programs, the AAMC policy continues to call for the removal of the cap on the number of residency positions funded by Medicare. Other key recommendations in the new AAMC workforce policy include studying the geographic distribution of U.S. physicians to identify strategies to address the paucity of physicians in many areas; increasing the National Health Service Corps awards by at least 1,500 per year to help meet the need for physicians who care for underserved populations and to address rising medical student indebtedness; and examining ways to develop a formal, voluntary process for assessing medical schools outside the United States that enroll primarily Americans, and to develop a mechanism for overseeing the U.S. clinical training of medical students enrolled in foreign medical schools.
