Members of Congress and others have questioned whether expanding the scope of the Medicare graduate medical education (GME) program to include nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) could help mitigate the effects of a physician shortage in the United States. A Senate Committee on Appropriations report asked the US Government…

Reviews the rural physician shortage and related policy and research needs. Discusses geographic distribution of physicians, quality of rural care, rural recruitment and retention, rural residency training, factors in medical education affecting entry into rural practice, physician productivity and income, reimbursement, federal and state programs…

Earlier reports and studies have endorsed the consortia concept as a vehicle for reorganizing medical education and restructuring the physician workforce. This report by the Council on Graduate Medical Education, which serves in an advisory capacity to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and to Congress, concurs in this…

This report reassesses recommendations made by the Council on Graduate Medical Education in earlier reports which had, beginning in 1992, addressed the problems of physician oversupply. In this report physician supply and requirements are examined in the context of a health care system increasingly dominated by managed care. Patterns of physician…