Do you remember the
outrage that ensued after the 2-3 hour wait times and missed flights that
occurred at O’Hare Airport the weekend of May 14, 2016?Frustrated passengers began tweeting #IHateThe Wait.US Senator Mark Kirk, IL, called for TSA
Administrator, Peter Neffenger, to fix this problem by Memorial Day or step
down.Even the White House weighed in on
this travesty. (1)By May 25th
Mr. Neffenger told members of House Homeland Security Committee that the agency
was taking measures to resolve this issue.By May 24th an airline official said that O’Hare’s waits were
down to 15 minutes.That took 10 days to
“fix”!
This outrage is what has to happen to solve the current
travesty of the residency shortage. There are no “normal channels” to solve this
crisis.The Federal government is moving
in typical fashion, slowly.The first
legislation introduced was “Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of
2011.It was proposed again in 2013, and
again by Senator Bill Nelson, FL, in 2015 (S1148) and by Representative Joseph
Crowley (HR 2124) in the House.Nothing
has been passed or implemented at this point.
This bill would
increase the number of residency slots by 15,000 over a 5 year period.We already have more that 40,000 unmatched
graduates right now over the last 5 years alone!The AMA and the ACGME have not proposed any
solutions.Only a few states have
created legislation (generally applicable only to their own citizens).
The only glimmer of hope has been the budgetary allocations
some states have made.They have offered
financial incentives to hospitals to increase residency slots or add new
residencies.This has had some success.
Why are we not as outraged as the passengers at O”HareAirport?These unmatched doctors have spent more that 4 years of their lives and countless
dollars trying to complete their medical training.But they are deadlocked.If I were they, I would gladly accept a 3 HOUR security delay in view of their own situations.
We have to get the “word out”.We have to tweet, blog, share on facebook,
contact healthcare professionals and societies, contact legislators, and yes,
even the White House!
Thank you for your determination, insistence, and perseverance in keeping the issue in the spotlight. I believe that there is an easy solution if the mentioned organizations and others have the will. They can advocate changing the way congress reimburses the hospitals for the GME. Congress is already paying generous money for those hospitals and one way congress can solve the problem without costing it extra money is using the leverage of GME fund. Congress can distribute the fund as vouchers to at least the qualified US citizens and that would push the hospitals to meet the ACGME requirements so that they can compete for the applicants' vouchers or money and not the other way around. In this way, I believe that there will be no unmatched doctor with voucher because the hospitals will compete for the last unmatched doctor with voucher.
Thank you for your determination, insistence, and perseverance in keeping the issue in the spotlight. I believe that there is an easy solution if the mentioned organizations and others have the will. They can advocate changing the way congress reimburses the hospitals for the GME. Congress is already paying generous money for those hospitals and one way congress can solve the problem without costing it extra money is using the leverage of GME fund. Congress can distribute the fund as vouchers to at least the qualified US citizens and that would push the hospitals to meet the ACGME requirements so that they can compete for the applicants' vouchers or money and not the other way around. In this way, I believe that there will be no unmatched doctor with voucher because the hospitals will compete for the last unmatched doctor with voucher.
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