Given that such a large percentage of the medical spending in the United States goes towards end-of-life care, it seems odd that it would be hard to find doctors interested in geriatric care.
But a report by NPR suggests that, just as Medicare funding will soon not be great enough to care for the country's burgeoning retired population, there are not nearly enough medical school grads going into elder care.
The radio station put the spotlight on West Virginia, home to one of America's poorest and oldest populations. Nearly a quarter of the state's 1.8 million residents are over 60, but there are only 36 doctors that specialize in elderly care.
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One of them, Todd Goldberg, told NPR, "The current workforce is inadequately trained and inadequately prepared to deal with what's been called the silver tsunami — a tidal wave of elderly people — increasing in the population in West Virginia, across America, and across the world really."
Part of the problem may be that to become a geriatrician, young doctors must spend a year in a fellowship that trains them on elderly care. Of the 383 fellowship spots available nationally to medical residents, only about half are filled this year.
None of the four such fellowships offered in West Virginia has attracted a resident in the past three years.
Why? Geriatric care might present a solid business bet in some ways, since there are bound to be plenty of patients in the coming years, but even spending one year in a non-lucrative fellowship program can frustrate the heavily indebted medical school graduates.
In addition, while geriatricians are not poor, they make less on average than doctors in other fields. In 2010, according to the American Geriatrics Society, the median salary for a geriatrician was $183,523. That was $5,879 lower than that of a family physician and $21,856 lower than that of a general internist.
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