Texas continues to attract folks who want to call the Lone Star State home.
And to meet the concomitant health care needs, Texas has licensed new physicians at increasing rates for more than a decade.
However, despite those improvements, Texas still ranks near the bottom at 47th in the number of actively practicing primary care physicians per capita, and 48th for general surgeons, according to Association of American Medical Colleges.
Texas has created medical schools to educate more future physicians, but the state risks losing hard-fought ground on providing enough residency training spots, says Marcia Collins, TMA’s associate vice president of medical education.
Thanks in part to ongoing Texas Medical Association advocacy, Texas in 2018 achieved a 1.1 to 1 ratio of entry-level residency positions for each Texas medical school graduate, ensuring that future physicians who study here can train here – which in turn will likely lead them to practice here.
“Residencies are a critical component of a physician’s ongoing education and training,” said Amarillo family physician Rodney Young, MD. “The good health of the state is dependent on Texans having access to medical care, which comes with having enough trained physicians.”
Research by TMA’s Medical Education Department shows that Texas is well positioned to accommodate medical students through 2023. But almost 475 more residency spots are needed between 2024 and 2027 to keep pace with demand and growth, according to data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. That requires funding.
And that funding has been jeopardized by mandatory, across the board 5% budget cuts for not only the 2020-2021 biennial budget, but also the 2022-2023 state budget under development right now.
Along with an adequate supply of graduate medical education (GME) opportunities, Texas created and funded two programs to bridge the chasm of need for primary care physicians, one of which now has nearly 400 primary care physicians committed to practicing in the state’s most underserved areas: the Physician Education Loan Repayment program and the Rural Training Track Grant Program.
TMA’s legislative recommendations aim to maintain funding for these and other vital programs, which will help ensure that the state’s most vulnerable patients can get quality health care when they need it.
Those recommendations support further development of the physician workforce pipeline through:
- Continued funding in the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board budget for the state GME Expansion Grant Program, Rural Training Track Grant Program, Physician Education Loan Repayment Program, Statewide Primary Care Preceptorship Program, Family Medicine Residency Program, and Joint Admission Medical Program.
- Continued “formula” funding for state medical education and GME teaching costs.
In order to continue to meet the state’s growing health care needs, TMA also calls on legislators to ensure that Texas remains a viable place to practice medicine:
- Stabilize physician practice viability by adopting state policies that restore a healthy physician practice environment, including payment policies that enable physicians to meet costs and stay in business; minimizing physician practice interruptions; and ensuring physicians have strong practice liability protections.
- Maintain robust physician workforce data collection and analysis to monitor the impact of the pandemic on physician supply and distribution and on patient access to medical care.
TMA’s legislative briefs on graduate medical education and workforce development can be accessed on our website.
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