M4 Discussion

(M4 Discussion)

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M4 Discussion

Measures That Have Been or Can Be Employed to Overcome Problems Related to Physician Maldistribution and Imbalance

Limited access to healthcare is associated with physician shortages in marginalized, rural, and remote areas where a lack of or insufficient general practitioners is typical. Ensuring balanced access to physicians is challenging for decision-makers because physicians’ access is influenced by healthcare demand, which is more in urban areas. However, there are strategies and measures adopted to address physician imbalance and maldistribution, including incentives to select family health as a specialty or provide services in remote and rural areas or generally underserved areas and recruiting foreign physicians using bilateral agreements (de Oliveira et al., 2017). There are federal programs in place to help address the issue to increase physician supply in remote areas, including the National Health Service Corps, making scholarship support conditional after committing to serve in these areas, and the Migrant and Community Health Center Programs, established to offer care in poor and under-served areas through federal grants and primary care training support and Area Health Education Centers (de Oliveira et al., 2017). Higher pay can also help remedy physician maldistribution. Increasing pay for primary care physicians working in underserved areas can be important in encouraging physicians to move their service provision to underserved areas. (M4 Discussion)

Initiatives To Recruit/Retain Physicians in Your Facility

The workforce crisis in primary care is an issue for healthcare managers allocated the duty of recruiting and retaining physicians, who are in high demand across the country experiencing shortages and maldistribution. Improving recruitment and retention is imperative, and it can be done through strategies like financial incentives, peer support, professional development and research support, retainer schemes, re-entry schemes, and hiring specialized recruiters or case managers (Verma et al., 2018). Also, according to Verma et al. (2018), I would adopt rural or underserved postgraduate training and primary care focused undergraduate placement to recruit and retain physicians in facilities located in rural and under-served areas. (M4 Discussion)

References

de Oliveira, A. P., Dussault, G., & Craveiro, I. (2017). Challenges and strategies to improve the availability and geographic accessibility of physicians in Portugal. Human resources for health, 15(1), 24. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-017-0194-3

Verma, P., Ford, J. A., Stuart, A., Howe, A., Everington, S., & Steel, N. (2018). A systematic review of strategies to recruit and retain primary care doctors. BMC health services research, 16, 126. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-016-1370-1

 

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