This is the only way to solve Arizona’s doctor shortage

Arizona is facing a shortage in the health care workforce, including doctors and nurses. If action isn’t taken now, the health care industry will be unable to care for our growing and aging population.

Arizona has several medical schools, and our major universities are opening new and expanding their medical schools to fill the pipeline of future workers.

But without adequate government funding for graduate medical education (GME), we remain hamstrung in making meaningful progress in meeting the growing demand.

The Arizona Board of Regents estimates that 23,300 more health care professionals will be needed by 2030 to fill the shortages across six major health care occupations or about 2,300 net every year.

This includes additional physicians and nurses of all specialties across the state.

Arizona ranks near the bottom (44th) in the number of primary care physicians per capita. The state is short by 667 at this very moment and needs 2,000 by 2030.

Nearly 40% of Arizonans live in communities with health professional shortages. This is unacceptable.

Arizona only started restoring state dollars for graduate medical education in 2019 after eliminating funding for nearly a decade following the Great Recession.

Arizona’s investment is even more critical given that Medicare, one of several federal sources of graduate medical education, capped its funding in 1997.

Since then, the state’s population grew by more than 2 million, with the largest percentage over age 65.

Members of the Health System Alliance of Arizona train two out of three physicians across the state, but with the current GME funding, we cannot keep up with the demand of a growing population.

More GME funds means more residency programs, the last step in health care education.

In 2022, 3,225 seniors and graduates of U.S. medical schools did not match into a residency position. Another 1,949 U.S. citizens and 3,293 non-U.S. citizens who trained at international medical schools failed to match into a U.S. residency program.

That’s nearly 8,500 doctors who were left unmatched.

We know that more than half of residents end up practicing in the state in which they did their residency. More residencies in Arizona equals more Arizona medical professionals that practice in Arizona.

It would be a shame to increase Arizona’s output of medical students only to send them to other states for their residency.

We are committed to addressing the physician workforce challenges. Collectively, our systems have recently invested in expanding residency and fellowship training at our hospitals to increase trained physicians in Arizona.

But our investment is incredibly costprohibitive.

Arizona’s proposed fiscal 2025 budget calls for $9 million in GTE funding. More state and federal assistance is needed.

For a rough estimate, we need 1,101 more residents to be ranked 15th in ratio of residents per capita. That’s an additional $165 million of funding per year.

The state can help address the shortage of providers by funding startup costs for new and expanding programs.

This will help much-needed physician specialties, including family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, geriatrics, general surgery and other sub-specialists serving especially Arizona’s rural and medically underserved areas.

By expanding residency programs in Arizona, the state will solve two problems:

● Attracting additional physicians to train in the state, and

● Expanding our in-state program offerings for graduates of Arizona medical schools.

AHCCCS, Arizona’s Medicaid agency, can further aid the efforts by seeking a waiver from the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services to allow the state to use federal Medicaid graduate medical education funding to support these new primary care residency programs.

Arizona’s health care industry, higher education partners and our existing workforce are doing what we can.

It’s time for our state and federal leadership to prioritize investing in more GME funding to ensure a stronger, more resilient health care for Arizonans.