Shortages of physicians may threaten the planned expansion of the nation's Community, Migrant, Public Housing, and Homeless Health Centers, concludes a study released this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Health Centers now provide medical, dental, and mental health care to more than 15 million Americans in more than 3,600 communities across the country.
There are Community Health Centers in every state and in the District of Columbia.
The problem may become worse because of recent cuts in federal funding for training family physicians, and recent declines in the number of medical students choosing to specialize in family medicine or in other primary-care fields, such as internal medicine or pediatrics.
According to a recent American College of Physicians report, the number of primary-care physicians who are retiring is greater than the number of primary-care physicians graduating from medical schools.
Attracting doctors and nurses to rural areas may require additional measures, such as increases in financial bonuses, already provided by Medicare, to rural physicians.
An accompanying editorial by Dr. Christopher Forrest, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, discusses the implications of the shortage of primary-care physicians on the nation's health-care safety net.
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