eskimo doctors

Alaska's Doctor Shortage

2/27/2007

Sen. Lisa Murkowski began the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Committee hearing on Feb. 21 by addressing mail she's received over the past
year from patients, especially those on Medicare, who say they have made 80 to
100 calls unsuccessfully trying to find a doctor.These calls are a cry for help.
The shortage of physicians in Alaska continues to worsen and the level of
treatment that seniors receive has declined.The medical association is backing
state legislation to fund training of 20 Alaska medical students per year
through the WWAMI program. Students are able to attend out-of-state colleges and
receive discounted tuition in Wyoming, Washington, Alaska, Montana and Idaho.
There are currently 10 Alaskans enrolled in each University of Washington
medical class. Alaska also offers one three-year residency program, training 12
new family practice doctors per year. WWAMI and Alaska's residency program both
produce about 14 doctors per year who stay in Alaska.This number is pathetically
low compared to Texas and California, where there are more than 6,000 residency
slots in each state. Alaska's hope for physicians shouldn't be out of state. But
the problem is that the eligible medical students can't get the training here.
The WWAMI program needs to expand available slots for medical students, rather
than force students to leave state to attend a university that provides more
opportunities.Debt has become a concern, however, for students who are
practicing to be physicians.Creating special residency programs - which would
promise residents a job upon completion - and providing more funding for medical
programs would allow students to start and finish the program and residency
training without fear of debt. This would also give an incentive for more
medical residents to stay in state, and it could improve the quality of medical
care for seniors. Residency programs need to be made eligible for federal
funding to encourage partnerships between Outside residencies and Alaska, rather
than having medical students permanently leave the state, ultimately creating a
shortage of eligible physicians.
And guess what? UAA is across the street from Providence Alaska Medical
Center, the state's largest hospital, which already provides continuing
education for physicians. What Alaska needs is to create a medical program in
state by creating a partnership between Providence Hospital and UAA. The need
for physicians has been made clear, so a step in the right direction would be
providing more funding toward that goal. What UAA needs is a medical program
that can train more than the paltry 20 students who have to travel out of state
to receive additional training.Unfortunately, the University of Alaska Fairbanks
receives the most funding of all UA campuses. During Lisa Murkowski's first year
as senator, the federal government provided almost 73 percent of the funding at
UAF for research. UAF is the northernmost campus in Alaska, and it has a
shrinking student enrollment. It's time to stop bailing out the sinking ship
that is UAF and allocate more funds to UAA. The state's largest university is
the ideal location for establishing a medical program in Alaska.Murkowski says
she will soon propose a bill to back expansion of doctor training programs and
the expansion of community health centers. But unless she wishes to receive more
calls each year regarding the lack of eligible doctors in Alaska, she should
consider ways to improve funding to establish a medical program and create a
partnership between UAA and Providence Hospital.Supplying more opportunities
locally by creating UAA's own medical program will fulfill the demand for the
increasing need of physicians in Alaska.

This article talks about the severe shortage of doctors in Alaska. (Can you imagine making 100 phone calls to doctors without finding one?!) As the article says, Alaska is funding a program to train students out of state in the medical profession, and med schools in Washington are offering discount tuition. Still, the problem remains debt: students can't afford a pricey stint in med school, and a residency program. Full-tuition grants are one option; building a med school in state is another option. Students would be more eager to go to in an in-state school, and they could apply for the appropiate government grants. The shortage can be alleviated by raising the supply of doctors--the demand is certainly high enough.