Quote:Medical schools can sprout up but what is restraining the output is number of residency seats available here in the US, which is regulated by the ACGME. This issue of #medical students to #residency slots available is already occurring. 

 

DO's can enter a DO residency, as well as an MD residency (but is generally harder for the higher-tier specialties).

There will be no more DO residency in 2020, they will all be one after the merger. And while new residency's are being added, they are pretty much exclusively primary care. ACGME reminds me of nursing schools a decade or two ago- Shortage shortage everywhere! Then they doubled the amounts of nurses being produced and when the market crashed suddenly new grads couldn't get jobs in a 'recession proof' profession. I was there, I remember it well.

 

The residency is the restriction, but we have a problem with geographic distribution of providers more than anything else. People want to live and work in the big population centers with the money and support. Also they want all the normal things that people want (good schools for kids, sports teams, costco etc). Most people do not want to work at some dinky hospital with less than 100 beds where the patients cry when they found out they were dropped there. Where you are basically a referral center for your flagship.

 

Quote:Why should someone proposing to build a hospital have to prove to some government bureaucrat that it's "needed?" Can't a better hospital with lower fees be good for everyone, whether or not there is already a hospital in place?

I can see the other side of the coin, hospitals only want to add a footprint where the moneys at. So instead of going to a medically needy area that's further out and poorer, they all want to get in the same middle upper Surburbia. When you have a resource like medicine you can't just let them line up next to each other like car dealers. People need emergency care in different places.

 

But overall I agree, you should be able to put were you want.

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