Family docs need help

Saturday, Aug. 22, 2009 | 2:07 a.m.

Family doctors have been the linchpin of medical care in this nation.

But family practitioners, who make that first diagnosis so we get the right medical treatment, are dwindling in number.

A story last week in USA Today lays out in stark terms how medical school graduates increasingly have decided to become specialists. Statistics from the American Academy of Family Physicians help tell the story:

The number of medical students opting to go into primary care has declined 52 percent since 1997. The future isn’t rosy, either. Currently there are about 100,000 family doctors, but it’s projected that there will be a shortage of 40,000 family doctors by 2020.

One reason for the lack of medical graduates entering this field: The pay is much better for specialists than it is for general practitioners.

And, particularly for students who will need to repay massive student loans from their undergraduate years and medical school, paying off that debt is a big consideration when looking at their career paths.

“The biggest problem is the payment model,” Sameer Badlani, an instructor at the University of Chicago’s school of medicine, told USA Today. “The more procedures you do, the more money you make. That is why, in a procedure-based specialty, a physician can make about four to five times the annual salary a primary care physician can earn.”

Although much of the debate about health care reform has focused on the merits of a public option plan, the lack of family doctors is an issue that is crucially important.

As a nation, we need to find ways to encourage more medical students to become family doctors and, necessarily, part of that is better compensating them.