Forget the numbers. Focus on the patients.
That’s the message of the 197-page report, The Physician Workforce of the United States: A Family Medicine Perspective (PDF file: 197 pages/1,265 KB. More information on using PDF files.) recently published online by the AAFP’s Robert Graham Center in Washington.
The report, approved by the AAFP Board of Directors last year, compares physician workforce studies since 1981 to the projected demand for family physicians under the new model of care recommended by the Future of Family Medicine project (see http://www.annfammed.org/cgi/content/full/2/suppl_1/s3). Results indicate that family medicine is on target for producing enough family physicians to meet current demand, assuming one family doctor cares for 1,200 patients under the new model of care.
AAFP Workforce Study: Focus on Service, Not Numbers
By News Staff
3/4/2005
This story first appeared in the March 4, 2005, AAFP Direct.
Included in the workforce report’s recommendations:
- Aggressively advocate sufficient revisions in payment and financial models to establish and sustain new-model family medicine.
- Advocate increased education and training in family medicine residencies focused on the care of older people, people of all ages with chronic conditions, and evidence-based health promotion and disease prevention.
- Support modest expansions of the number of allopathic medical students without expansion in graduate medical education positions.
- Evaluate workforce policies, realizing that rural people and other underserved populations are depending on family physicians.
“Family physicians are now in the enviable position of having accomplished to a large extent their prior workforce goals,” the report says. That doesn’t mean the specialty should relax in recruiting new members to its ranks. Rather, recruitment focus should change.
“Family medicine should recast its gaze from growing a family physician workforce to sustaining and enabling the workforce that already exists and from an emphasis on producing physicians to an emphasis on producing critical services of great benefit to the people,” the report says.
As such, the document confirms what many in family medicine have contended, according to Perry Pugno, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Division of Medical Education at AAFP.
“It essentially says we need to stop worrying about the number of family physicians and focus on the quality,” said Pugno. “By doing that, we’ll ensure that demand (for family physicians) will follow. We should be concerned with preparing family physicians for the practice of the future, given what we know about the shifting demographics and anticipated patient care needs. The report validates the quality-versus-quantity position that family medicine has been talking about for years.”
“Family medicine should recast its gaze from growing a family physician workforce to sustaining and enabling the workforce that already exists and from an emphasis on producing physicians to an emphasis on producing critical services of great benefit to the people,” the report says.
As such, the document confirms what many in family medicine have contended, according to Perry Pugno, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Division of Medical Education at AAFP.
“It essentially says we need to stop worrying about the number of family physicians and focus on the quality,” said Pugno. “By doing that, we’ll ensure that demand (for family physicians) will follow. We should be concerned with preparing family physicians for the practice of the future, given what we know about the shifting demographics and anticipated patient care needs. The report validates the quality-versus-quantity position that family medicine has been talking about for years.”
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