Most of Missouri Facing Shortage of Primary Care Doctors
Posted on Thursday, July 21st, 2011 at 2:54 pm
Thursday, July 21, 2011
By Melissa Miller ~ Southeast Missourian
Practicing primary care isn’t glamorous. There’s nothing sexy about treating a sore throat.There are no reality television shows about family physicians like there are about plastic surgeons.Fewer medical students are choosing to go into primary care at a time when demand for their services is expected to increase as more people gain access to care through federal health care reform.Eighty percent of Missouri, including all of Southeast Missouri, has already been designated a Health Provider Shortage Area by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That means one in five Missourians is without access to primary health care, according to the Missouri Foundation for Health. The problem is worse in rural areas than in urban centers, said Thomas McAuliffe, policy analyst with the foundation.
Only about 12 percent of Missouri medical school graduates went into family medicine in 2009, according to the Missouri Primary Care Association.
“Being a primary care physician is not an easy job,” said Dr. Danette Miller, a primary care physician with Southeast Primary Care-West in Cape Girardeau. “When compared to various other specialties, family practice is not as glamorous and not nearly the moneymaker.”
Declining reimbursements from insurance companies and the hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical school debt doctors graduate with are both contributing to the shortage of primary care physicians, she said.
Primary care doctors earn about half what specialists do, according to the Medical Group Management Association.
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