Practicing medicine in a ski town - saturated markets?

[calimeds]

Thought I'd post in this forum because I imagine many residents are more informed on physician markets than the med students and pre-meds.

I'm interested in practicing in or very close to a Western U.S. ski town when I'm done (Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, northern Cali, etc.). Are these markets already saturated with other physician-ski-bums? I keep hearing about rural America's lack of physicians, but I thought maybe that would not be the case with areas very close to prime ski resort towns.

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[calimeds]

Oops, didn't mean to post this in the Emergency Medicine forum - meant to post it in general residency issues. Can I move my own thread or can only mods do that?

 

[gutonc]

Thought I'd post in this forum because I imagine many residents are more informed on physician markets than the med students and pre-meds.

I'm interested in practicing in or very close to a Western U.S. ski town when I'm done (Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, northern Cali, etc.). Are these markets already saturated with other physician-ski-bums? I keep hearing about rural America's lack of physicians, but I thought maybe that would not be the case with areas very close to prime ski resort towns.

Yes, these markets tend to be saturated. Obviously it depends on the specialty (probably more open in Primary Care than Ortho and EM for instance) but they're tough to break into. A friend of mine looked into EM jobs in Bend, OR and they basically just laughed. They have about 1 EM opening every 4 or 5 years in their EM group. The NE might be a slightly better market (Green and White Mt. areas in VT and NH) but probably not much better. No reason not to try, just don't be shocked if it's hard to get a gig.