PROJECTING THE SUPPLY AND DEMAND FOR PRIMARY CARE PRACTITIONERS THROUGH 2020,

November 2013 by HRSA

It is here, the latest definitive report from HRSA on the PCP shortage. The long and the short of it are illustrated on page 26 of 37 pages. HPSAs were short 7,500 PCPs in baseline 2010 and will be short 20,400 in 2020. This is our concern. We leave deeper analysis to others.

We believe that the reason for the PCP shortages between 2010 and 2020 is and will be because the HPSAs are not adequately represented in the large ongoing recruitment process being carried out by the professional recruiting community. There are 250 members of the National Association of Physician Recruiters and their companies, 1,100 members of the Association of Staff Physician Recruiters, and over 2, 500 English speaking call centers worldwide involved in the business of physician recruiting where fees begin at about $30,000 per physician recruited.

Our view is that unless a PCP has in hand an offer from an HPSA facility along with the numerous others that it nearly impossible that the PCP will be employed by a Federally Qualified Health Center in an HPSA. Professionals such as PCPs are in great demand and those in good standing are rarely looking at job opportunities, they are instead being heavily recruited by the professional recruiters and the call centers noted above.

Our new 501c3 charity has a single focus and that is to teach community volunteers in Federally Qualified Health Center Facilities (FQHCs) how to recruit their own PCPs. We are presently in a fund raising campaign to make our services and appropriate recruiting tools available to FQHCs at no cost to them. We believe there is opportunity to recruit PCPs from areas where there are many to areas of need. Using the HRSA number of 212,500 PCPs in 2010 and a U.S. population of 308 million there was in 2010 1 PCP for each 1,449 people, the HPSA guidelines are 1 PCP for 3,500. This indicates that by HRSA standards there are more than enough PCPs in many major U.S. communities to recruit from. The case is made by some that these pockets of high density PCPs are partly the cause of the high price of healthcare.

We are a group of professionals with recruiting industry experience. Our vision is for each Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) to have access to the primary care physicians (PCPs) they need. We believe that trained people who love their communities can be better at recruiting than professionals for they have only one client, the community they chose to live in.

http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/OMHHE/Documents/CVL%20Ss%20for%20General%20111113.pdf