On assistant physicians

Kaiser Health News reported on assistant physicians, which it explained are medical school graduates who have not yet completed residency training (the article helpfully pointed out that assistant physicians are different from physician assistants). It appears that five states allow assistant physicians to provide medical care. However, apparently, Medicare does not reimburse assistant physicians for their work.

As discussed in the article, there does seem to be a shortage of qualified medical providers. A key question is whether or not assistant physicians are adequately qualified to provide medical care (the article reports that on a national basis, the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Family Physician oppose licensing assistant physicians). It seems likely that there would be some basic level of care that assistant physicians could provide, especially in times of acute shortages of qualified medical personnel. If the availability of Medicare providers were a higher priority (and if Medicare deemed assistant physicians sufficiently qualified to render some services), perhaps Medicare would consider reimbursing assistant physicians some fraction of what they pay physicians.

Also discussed in the article is the American Medical Association's support for increasing the number of residency positions by 14,000 over the next seven years. In a broader economy where suppliers can usually freely enter and exit a marketplace, it is curious that increasing the number of residency positions requires an act of Congress. This policy is likely because the federal government reimburses hospitals to host residency positions and thus, increasing the number of positions requires more budget allocation. Perhaps the industry should propose a more flexible model where the funding is less tied to the federal government. It seems that having more residency positions would alleviate the shortage of physicians while at the same time allowing more medical school graduates to actually train and move on with their careers.