Podcast: Physician Workforce Issues - Interview with Atul Grover, M.D. of The Lewin Group
Kent Bottles
An in-depth Podcast interview by SoundPractice discussing physician's supply and demand, demographics, geographic location, and effects of outsourcing and the use of non-physician clinicians.
| Duration | Size | Download | Play | Topic/Channel |
| 0:22:40 |
10.68mb |
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General Practice Management |
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(harold1812, Fri, Aug 19, 2005)
The issues discussed by Dr Grover on medical manpower are very interesting and reminds me of my previous experience in dealing with specialist manpower issues in Singapore. Currently, there is "allocative inefficiency" in the distribution of specialists across various specialties here. We are facing shortages in specialties like renal medicine, geriatrics, pathology and public health which are traditionally perceived as less glamoourous and have lower remunerative potential. On the other hand, our specialist training posts for ophthalmology, plastic surgery, orthopaedic surgery and O&G are often saturated. The Ministry had problems trying to encourage trainees to enrol in unpopular specialties, which we felt were critical specialties to develop both in the public and private sectors if we wish to establish our nation as a regional medical hub in SE Asia. Our strategy was then to leverage on training subsidies to get more trainees into less popular specialties from the popular ones. Trainees in selected popular specialties now have to copay for their training (translate into salary cutting) while those in less popular specialties get additional subsidies. To date, we are still monitoring the impact of our initiative. While the use of financial strategies to balance specialty distribution may seem a bit crude, we believe they are effective as they address the most fundamental reason - monetary earnings -underlying the choice of specialties among trainees.
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