As the population continues to grow, change and age, Florida will face a critical shortage of physicians over the next 10 years.
Article continues below
That is unless more medical residency training positions are created, the state's top teaching hospitals announced.
While Florida has known for some time about its shortage of doctors, a first-ever study of physician supply and demand commissioned by the Teaching Hospital Council of Florida and the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida found the shortage will grow to 7,000 physician specialists by 2025.
This shortfall spans 19 specialties, with the largest areas of need in psychiatry, general surgery, rheumatology, and thoracic surgery.
Among states nationwide, Florida ranks near the bottom in the number of residency training slots relative to its population. As a result, Florida would need to create and fill 13,568 residency positions to fully resolve the physician shortage by 2025. That equates to about 1,360 new residency slots a year for the next decade.
The study showed Florida will face a 19 percent shortfall of physician specialists needed in 2025, compared with an overall 7 percent shortage of physicians. Shortfalls will exist to varying degrees across all regions, with the Panhandle and Southwest Florida having the most severe shortages of doctors in endocrinology, rheumatology, hematology and other non-primary care areas.
Ultimately, creating additional medical residency slots will allow more opportunities for our medical school graduates to stay and practice in Florida, a secondary component of the study concludes.
In a sampling of more than 16,600 active physicians, the study found that where medical school graduates conducted their residencies played a crucial role in where they chose to practice. Eighty- one percent of doctors who completed their medical school and residency training in Florida ended up staying. Unfortunately, Florida is losing two-thirds of its medical school graduates to out-of-state residency programs.
Governor Rick Scott made closing the gap between physician supply and demand a priority in 2013 by proposing $80 million in recurring funds for a new Medicaid residency program, saying it was important to create jobs in fields where demand will remain high.
In his 2015-16 budget package, Governor Scott is proposing to increase graduate medical education funding by another $7.5 million annually. ■
Predominant upper-level ridging stretching from the Southwest to the southern High Plains will allow for another day of record-breaking heat across parts of Nevada and Arizona today.