Quoting a bunch of head hunters and a rural doc who can’t find anyone willing to move to Ukiah, the Los Angeles Times says this:

A looming doctor shortage threatens to create a national healthcare crisis by further limiting access to physicians, jeopardizing quality and accelerating cost increases.

And so apparently we must build more medical schools and train more doctors, even though the doubling of the number trained in the 1970s hasn’t fully worked its way through the system and won’t for another ten years.

Momentum for change is building. This month, the executive council of the Assn. of American Medical Colleges will consider calling for a 30% boost in enrollment, double the increase it called for last year.

Meanwhile the Dartmouth guys (who maintain their starring role in THCB) say something oh so slightly different:

AMC inputs were highly correlated with the number of physician FTEs per Medicare beneficiary in AMC regions. Given the apparent inefficiency of current physician practices, the supply pipeline is sufficient to meet future needs through 2020, with adoption of the workforce deployment patterns now seen among AMCs and regions dominated by large group practices.

The powers that be in health care are advocating more money to come directly from the taxpayer into the system to train more doctors, who will then cost the nation much more when they go into practice. Of course that’s a much easier answer for them than rational reorganization of the health care system by somehow or other making it all look more like Mayo.

So how do they start using language to persuade those of us suckers who are going to have to pony up for this that they’re right and the Dartmouth crew are wrong?

The AMA changed its position on the physician workforce a year ago, acknowledging that a shortage was indeed emerging. The consensus has shifted so quickly that experts who view the physician workforce as adequate — though poorly distributed, inefficient or wasteful — now are seen as contrarians.

So that’s it. Wennberg (and Goodman and Fischer and the rest of them) are now officially “contrarians”. Hmm…aren’t they the ones who make all the money on Wall Street?

CODA: The same edition of the LA Times has an article about the international outsourcing of radiology reading, which gives a clue as to how some of that “rational reorganization” might happen.