Human and Financial Resources

The ratio of physicians to population continues to increase beyond estimated needs. An oversupply of
physicians in many urban regions contrasts with continuing problems of access in rural and inner city areas. Discuss why you believe the maldistribution of physicians persists in spite of the number of physicians graduated? What solutions do you as a Christian healthcare administrator recommend to alleviate this imbalance?

Human and Financial Resources

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Human and Financial Resources

The United States experiences a mal-distribution of physicians despite the countries having a high number of graduates. As compared to the rural areas, the urban areas have an oversupply of physicians. On the other hand, the rural areas have low numbers of physicians as well as more emergency physicians approaching the retirement age. It is vital to acknowledge that the obstacles that the healthcare providers and the patients face in the rural areas touch on diverse factors like economic factors, isolation of living in rural and remote areas, educational shortcomings as well as lack of legislative and policy recognition. A majority of the physicians are more likely to prefer working the urban areas due to the prevalence of financial incentives, career development opportunities, better infrastructure and staffing, and professional work environment as well as workload and autonomy (Naylor et al., 2019).

Social-economic factors that can be linked to the misdistribution of the physicians despite a high number of graduate physicians include poverty levels among the rural Americans. Rural residents tend to be poorer with the disparities in incomes increasing among the rural minority populations. More so, a majority of the rural residents rely on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. The rural areas similarly lack transportation infrastructure hence experiencing difficulties reaching a doctor or a health facility.

In addition, the residents of the rural area lack access to 25 Mbps/3 Mbps of bandwidth, which according to the Federal Communications Commission is the benchmark for internet speed hence having difficulties accessing information. The physicians are therefore likely to have difficulties utilizing some platforms like telehealth and telemedicine due to poor internet connectivity as well as difficulties impeding interoperability of the healthcare applications. Due to the lack of income and employment, a significant number of rural residents lack health insurance resulting in low access and utilization of healthcare services. Rural areas tend to offer fewer opportunities for working spouses, rural hospitals may lack resources making the provision of health services difficult and strenuous. Most importantly, young physician graduates may worry about having to earn less in the rural areas, which is a major concern, especially for those with student loans, which may make them, opt for urban areas, which present competitive work opportunities.

As a Christian healthcare administrator, I would recommend several policies that I believe would help to alleviate the imbalance. The misdistribution of the physicians can be remedied by providing financial incentives such as higher pay and cancellation of student loan forgiveness for the primary care physicians working in the underserved regions. An increase in the compensation of the physicians especially those who are in higher demand is likely to ensure that the physicians provide more hours of services and most importantly be willing to work in the rural areas due to the financial incentives provided (Machado et al., 2021). The financial incentives would ensure that the physicians earn more money despite inconveniences at work such as lack of work resources, poor internet services, rough terrains, and even cultural barriers due to working with minority groups.

Another recommendation that I would offer would be to train more students in the rural areas hoping that the young doctors will not move to the urban areas but rather will practice in the rural areas. Government funding for rural residencies is likely to ensure that students from small rural communities train and opt to practice in their rural settings promoting continuity of care and gratification. By providing government funding, more individuals from the underserved and underrepresented minorities are likely to go back and serve their communities once they complete their medical education. In medicine, the healthcare workers are expected to not only make a difference in an individual but also a community. In the urban areas, physicians may have a limited scope of continuity of care with patients as compared to the rural areas where the physicians become part of the patient’s life for a long period hence experiencing medicine in a different and fulfilling way.

The third recommendation would be the provision of federal support to incentivize physicians to work in rural areas. It would be vital to acknowledge that most physicians prefer to work in urban areas due to opportunities and conducive work environments. Therefore, the adoption of the national-level interventions such as incentives like job promotions and grants for higher education would attract more physicians to work in the rural areas and in turn improve the health outcomes of the rural populations.

The mal-distribution of physicians is likely to result in gaps in population health between the rural and urban communities. Therefore, the adoption of incentive structures to support the redistribution of resources is likely to reduce the unequal burden experienced by the rural populations resulting in better utilization of care and the achievement of positive health outcomes. The involvement of different stakeholders would be necessary ranging from the government representatives, health consumer groups, clinical educators, and physicians with the ultimate goal of brainstorming and coming up with viable solutions.

References

Machado, S. R., Jayawardana, S., Mossialos, E., & Vaduganathan, M. (2021). Physician density by specialty type in urban and rural counties in the US, 2010 to 2017. JAMA network open, 4(1), e2033994-e2033994.

Naylor, K. B., Tootoo, J., Yakusheva, O., Shipman, S. A., Bynum, J. P., & Davis, M. A. (2019). Geographic variation in spatial accessibility of US healthcare providers. Plos one, 14(4), e0215016.