Med School class size expansion

[Gern Blansten]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

I have heard of many med school class sizes expanding, some considerably. However, the medicare caps on residency positions at hospitals are relatively fixed. Where will all of the new medical doctors train if there are no new funds available to expand medicare caps for hospitals? Perhaps the caps are not completely fixed, but there is not much movement there that I know of (because medicare is broke and broken). Any thoughts? I would think that this puts IMGs at a bigger disadvantage. This has been discussed previously, but I wanted to revisit the idea. Do american residency training programs owe it to our US med school grads to have a residency spot available for when they graduate? Even the ones who performed terribly in medical school??
Discuss.

 

[bodeno]

There should be room for the extra med students in the programs that don't normally fill, also it may also make it harder for FMGs to match.

 

[DO4lifer]

If you look at the programs that don't fill, its usually in primary care. I'm guessing they are hoping the new US grads trickle into these spots.

The expansion will make the already competitive specialties much more competitive. Which many would say is good for those fields, but really sucks for those applicants that get filtered out due to a lower class rank or board score.

So then the match will get that more complicated (everyone applies to even more programs due to greater competition) and more people will scramble (eventually entering primary care spots).

I can see how this is good for health care, yet is not good for the new physicians.

 

[SaintFrances]

I sure hope my family doctor didn't scramble into primary care after he couldn't get into his specialty of choice. There has to be a better way to get more people (and quality people at that) to go into primary care than simply by default.

 

[wmc24]

I sure hope my family doctor didn't scramble into primary care after he couldn't get into his specialty of choice. There has to be a better way to get more people (and quality people at that) to go into primary care than simply by default.

increase compensation and watch primary care slots fill up. not sure how to increase it but seems to be one of the only ways i really think would work besides paying off student loans (completely paying them off for the student).

 

[aredoubleyou]

The driving force for medical school expansion is primarily economic, in that the med school makes more money for the university. The off shore and now DO schools have been pumping out huge classes of students because they are businesses, and profitable businesses. MD schools are also essentially businesses too, but more analagous to being one of the more profitable divisions of a large corporation. Professional schools (medicine, law, business) is one of the easy ways universities make nearly guarenteed risk-free money.

 

[aredoubleyou]

I sure hope my family doctor didn't scramble into primary care after he couldn't get into his specialty of choice. There has to be a better way to get more people (and quality people at that) to go into primary care than simply by default.

In every line of work, people tend to take jobs that pay the best. If you have credentials that allow you to take a middle management jon at company X for $80K or a customer service job for $50K, most would choose the $80K. Its common sense. In medicine its called being greedy to take the primary care job for $110 as opposed to the consultant job for $280. When you finish med school and add up your credentials (scores, grades, rotations, etc) and find that you can enter two or more specialties which you find interesting and choose the one that has a better pay scale, that is natural human nature.

The only way to get more people into primary care is to pay them more for their work.

 

[Bertelman]

The driving force for medical school expansion is primarily economic, in that the med school makes more money for the university. The off shore and now DO schools have been pumping out huge classes of students because they are businesses, and profitable businesses. MD schools are also essentially businesses too, but more analagous to being one of the more profitable divisions of a large corporation. Professional schools (medicine, law, business) is one of the easy ways universities make nearly guarenteed risk-free money.

That, or they are trying to fill the impending gap of not enough physicians.

 

[fakin' the funk]

not enough physicians.

"doctopenia"?