Recruiters Get Ready…Here Comes Health Reform
By Kurt Mosley
Kurt Mosley, VP of Business Development, The MHA Group
The three trillion dollar question to which no one yet has a clear answer is what effect will the new health reform law have on how, when, and where health care is delivered in the United States?
What is clear, however, is that reform will create both opportunity and challenges for health care recruiting professionals. Over the next several years, over 30 million previously uninsured patients will obtain medical coverage thanks to the new law. Millions of these people will come from the ranks of the sick and the economically disadvantaged, two groups that require a disproportionately large volume of medical services.
Significantly enhanced demand for health care will put an additional strain on an already limited supply of health care professionals, including physicians, nurses and allied providers. Massachusetts, which implemented a health reform program very similar to the one mandated by the new federal law, provides a test case. Since access to medical services was expanded in the state, many patients have had a difficult time getting in to see a doctor. In 2009, Merritt Hawkins conducted a survey to determine how long patients have to wait for physician appointments. Of the 15 major cities examined in the survey, Boston had the longest average wait time – 49 days – despite having more physicians per capita than almost any other region in the United States.
No wonder that many health facility administrators are apprehensive about the new law. AMN Healthcare (Merritt Hawkins’ parent company) conducted a survey in April of this year asking hospital and medical group administrators about their initial reaction to health reform. Only about one quarter said they were pleased about the new law, whereas over 70 percent said the law was a cause for concern. Of most interest to recruiters, the majority of health administrators surveyed indicated that the new law would create the need for additional physicians, nurses, and allied providers at their facilities (please email me at kurt.mosley@amnhealthcare.com if you would like a copy of the AMN survey).
While reform is likely to significantly increase demand for health services, it will not have a particularly significant impact on the supply of clinical professionals. The new law acknowledges the shortage of health care professionals and takes some steps to address it. For example, the law calls for redistribution of a number of physician residency training slots that are not being used to training facilities where they will be used. Currently, there are 121,000 medical residency positions available at teaching facilities throughout the U.S, but only 109,000 are being used. Only a limited number of teaching facilities, however, have the funds and infrastructure needed to absorb redistributed slots. It is projected that redistribution of residency positions will only lead to several hundred more physicians coming out of training each year, when most experts agree that several thousand are needed to address current and projected shortages.
On the nursing front, the law provides funds to bolster faculty at nurse training programs. This is a useful measure since it is lack of faculty at nurse training programs, not lack of student applicants, which is inhibiting nurse supply. This measure, however, will not in itself create the hundreds of thousands of new nurses that are needed to remedy the nurse shortage.
It will therefore fall to recruiters to find ways to be successful in an era where demand for professionals will increase but supply will be constrained. Get ready – things are going to get interesting.
###
Kurt Mosley is Vice President of Strategic Alliances for Merritt Hawkins and for its parent company, AMN Healthcare. He can be reached at kurt.mosley@amnhealthcare.com.
Posted by Kurt Mosley
on May 19, 2010. Filed under Healthcare, Thought Leadership.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry