Nicole V. Baptista
As pressure to enact health care reform legislation increases, it is now more important than ever to contact your members of Congress and urge them to support expanding the number of graduate medical education (GME) positions as a necessary step to addressing workforce and access issues. Please contact your members of Congress and ask them to support the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2009 (S 973/HR 2251) and push for its inclusion in any piece of health care reform legislation.
If passed, the bill would increase GME positions by 15,000 with preference given to primary care specialties; allow unused positions to be redirected to other teaching hospitals; and reverse burdensome Medicare regulations that make it difficult for teaching hospitals to train residents in non-hospital settings. The Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act is the only health care reform proposal that increases GME positions to address the projected physician workforce shortage. The bill encapsulates a major tenet of the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine consensus statement on the physician workforce, which recommends:
- Strategically increasing the number of Medicare-funded positions for primary care specialties to adequately meet the nation’s health care needs and ensure new primary care slots should be added in geographic areas of demonstrated need.
- Enhancing the attractiveness of primary care careers by altering the physician reimbursement system, increasing job satisfaction for current and future primary care practitioners, providing incentives for geographic distribution of primary care physicians to areas of greatest need, and applying innovations to educational models.
- Increasing efficiency in the health care delivery system by broadening the use of electronic health records and other advances in health information technology as well as capitalizing on the use of physician extenders.
Please contact your members of Congress and urge them to support increasing GME positions as outlined in the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act. Be clear that reforming health care and increasing access will not be possible without increasing the number of physicians providing care.
To find contact information for your representative and senators, please visit www.house.gov and www.senate.gov. You can also recruit additional cosponsors for HR 2251/S 973 through the Association of American Medical Colleges website. During the August recess, AAIM encourages you to visit your members of Congress at their local offices.