Thousands of foreign-trained immigrant physicians are living in the United States with lifesaving skills that are going unused because they stumbled over one of the many hurdles in the path toward becoming a licensed doctor here.
The involved testing process and often duplicative training these doctors must go through are intended to make sure they meet this country's high quality standards, which American medical industry groups say are unmatched elsewhere in the world. Some development experts are also loath to make it too easy for foreign doctors to practice here because of the risk of a ‘brain drain’ abroad.
But many foreign physicians and their advocates argue that the process is unnecessarily restrictive and time-consuming, particularly since America's need for doctors will expand sharply in a few short months under US President Obama's health care law. They point out that medical services cost far more in the United States than elsewhere in the world, in part because of such restrictions.
The United States already faces a shortage of physicians in many parts of the country, especially in specialties where foreign-trained physicians are most likely to practice, like primary care. And that shortage is going to get exponentially worse, studies predict, when the health care law insures millions more Americans starting in 2014.
The new health care law only modestly increases the supply of homegrown primary care doctors, not nearly enough to account for the shortfall, and even that tiny bump is still a few years away because it takes so long to train new doctors. Immigrant advocates and some economists point out that the medical labor force could grow much faster if the country tapped the underused skills of the foreign-trained physicians who are already here but are not allowed to practice. Canada, by contrast, has made efforts to recognize more high-quality training programs done abroad.
‘It doesn't cost the taxpayers a penny because these doctors come fully trained,' said Nyapati Raghu Rao, the Indian-born chairman of psychiatry at Nassau University Medical Center and a past chairman of the American Medical Association's international medical graduates governing council.
'It is doubtful that the U.S. can respond to the massive shortages without the participation of international medical graduates. But we're basically ignoring them in this discussion and I don't know why that is.’
For years the United States has been training too few doctors to meet its own needs, in part because of industry-set limits on the number of medical school slots available.
The involved testing process and often duplicative training these doctors must go through are intended to make sure they meet this country's high quality standards, which American medical industry groups say are unmatched elsewhere in the world. Some development experts are also loath to make it too easy for foreign doctors to practice here because of the risk of a ‘brain drain’ abroad.
But many foreign physicians and their advocates argue that the process is unnecessarily restrictive and time-consuming, particularly since America's need for doctors will expand sharply in a few short months under US President Obama's health care law. They point out that medical services cost far more in the United States than elsewhere in the world, in part because of such restrictions.
The United States already faces a shortage of physicians in many parts of the country, especially in specialties where foreign-trained physicians are most likely to practice, like primary care. And that shortage is going to get exponentially worse, studies predict, when the health care law insures millions more Americans starting in 2014.
The new health care law only modestly increases the supply of homegrown primary care doctors, not nearly enough to account for the shortfall, and even that tiny bump is still a few years away because it takes so long to train new doctors. Immigrant advocates and some economists point out that the medical labor force could grow much faster if the country tapped the underused skills of the foreign-trained physicians who are already here but are not allowed to practice. Canada, by contrast, has made efforts to recognize more high-quality training programs done abroad.
‘It doesn't cost the taxpayers a penny because these doctors come fully trained,' said Nyapati Raghu Rao, the Indian-born chairman of psychiatry at Nassau University Medical Center and a past chairman of the American Medical Association's international medical graduates governing council.
'It is doubtful that the U.S. can respond to the massive shortages without the participation of international medical graduates. But we're basically ignoring them in this discussion and I don't know why that is.’
For years the United States has been training too few doctors to meet its own needs, in part because of industry-set limits on the number of medical school slots available.