In commemoration of this year’s observance of National Doctor’s Day on March 30, Executive Director Atul Grover, MD, PhD, highlighted the critical role of workforce projections that inform the nation’s future health and health care workforce.
The AAMC Research and Action Institute’s Fellow in Residence, Gaetano Forte, previously noted the importance of workforce projections as an essential tool to inform policymakers, researchers, and the academic medicine community. The brief emphasized that understanding the macro trends of workforce supply and demand—all of which point to future shortages of physicians across specialties and sub-specialties—helps critical parties plan for, fund, and direct training resources. Yet, there are distinct limitations to projection modeling that must still be addressed, including lack of data, workforce silos, and inadequate distribution and location modeling.
Read full brief on health workforce projections
As the AAMC and other leading workforce projection modelers continue to project significant physician shortages in the coming decades, Grover underscored the critical need for improvements and policy investments in health workforce projections, including the need to move away from physician-focused modeling to more services-based models that integrate the contributions of other health care workers beyond physicians.