The health care workforce has a message for Washington about health reform: It's not ready for it.
The Association of Academic Health Centers, a nonprofit group representing the nation's academic health centers, on Wednesday issued a report warning that the country's health workforce has "fallen to the back burner of priorities" at the exact time there will be an influx of patients entering the health care system due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
"Addressing the issue of the uninsured is necessary to achieve meaningful reform, but as we move forward with implementation of the ACA, the other weaknesses of our health care system, particularly with respect to the health workforce, will only be magnified," the report said.
Recommended For You
Dramatic growth in the country's aging population, coupled with the sizeable increase of newly insured persons in 2014, will strain an already struggling health care delivery system, the group said.
"We are at a critical juncture," Dr. Steven Wartman, president and CEO of the Association of Academic Health Centers, said in a statement. "As the 2014 deadline for most Americans to have health insurance approaches, the health care workforce is not ready, and we are quickly running out of time."
When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's individual mandate takes effect in 2014, some 30 million newly covered patients—people generally treated in emergency rooms now—will be shopping for doctors.
At a briefing on Capitol Hill April 15, leaders from academic health centers called on Congress to quickly appropriate funds to the National Health Care Workforce Commission so they can "take up their charge to substantively address and recommend solutions to the nation's health workforce needs."
The group also said that there needs to be talk of strategies to incentivize a more diverse pool of students pursuing careers in health care, as well as policies that encourage a broader geographic distribution of health professionals.
Industry insiders have been warning that the influx of new patients under reform, on top of the already growing physician shortage, will have profound implications for patient access to medical care.
The Association of American Medical Colleges has predicted there will be a shortage of 90,000 doctors by 2020. Half of those are primary-care physicians.
Many doctors say the act will have little impact on patients' access to medical care and will only create red tape.
"Government-mandated coverage is not the same thing as actual medical care," Kathryn Serkes, chair of the Doctor Patient Medical Association, said last year. "We'll still have millions who need medical care."
The new warning from the Association of Academic Health Centers comes at crucial time. The health care exchanges—a key part of the law's individual mandate in which the uninsured will be getting their health coverage—are set to begin open enrollment Oct. 1. Coverage begins Jan. 1, 2014.
"Unfortunately the issue is more complicated than just ensuring the right number of health professionals in the right places," Wartman said. "The ACA provides that people will have coverage, but that is just the beginning of the work. Now, we have to figure out how our health care system can best treat them."
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
