For some time now, we’ve been talking about the physician shortage that our country is currently plagued with, and concierge medicine might be the solution to this problem. If you think your appointment wait times are long now, just wait until a new healthcare reform bill goes into affect. With millions of newly insured Americans and less and less physicians to treat them, things will get pretty ugly out there.

According to the Wall Street Journal, America will find itself at a shortage of 125,000 primary care physicians over the next 15 years. This doesn’t bode well for the fact that we only graduate 27,000 new primary care physicians per year. The Wall Street Journal goes on to say that we already are short 16,000 physicians in 2010, and with the healthcare reform bill just around the corner, that could mean huge problems for the newly insured.

There are quite a few issues to this primary care physician crisis; one being the doctor’s yearly income, as speciailist make far more than primary care physicians, another being their schooling. The government actually runs a cap on the amount of residency positions available across the country, and that cap is limiting the amount of new physicians that can finish their schooling.

Well, this all may be about to change. While there still is a cap on residency positions available, more medical schools than ever before are opening or about to open. Not since the 1970’s has so many institutions promised to offer new medical schools, 23 to be exact.

Some schools, such as the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine, will aim to train doctors who will treat patients in more disadvantaged urban and rural areas, rather than in more well-to-do areas, reports the New York Times.  – FierceHealthCare.com

According to this HealthCare article, institutions around the nation are hoping to graduate 30% more medical students every year, which would greatly help that 125,000 physician deficit we will be facing in the next 15 years. With the new schools come new opportunities for students who in the past have chosen to study abroad. Now, they can  stay at home, learn the practice at home, and spend time with mentors at home.

Supporters of the expansion say that having more doctors will improve care, by getting doctors to urban and rural areas where they are needed, by shifting care to primary and family practice physicians rather than expensive specialists, and by reducing long waits for people to see a doctor and get the care they need. – NewYorkTimes.com

If you are tired of the long wati times and want a market based solution that give you the vip treatment, consider concierge medicine and http://www.SignatureMD.com.

Your health isn’t one-size-fits-all, and it shouldn’t have to be. Concierge medicine is not just about preventing illness, it’s about personalized healthcare that caters to you, the individual. The healthcare reform bill that is being tossed around is a sharp turn away from personalized medicine, directly into dark and disturbing territory.

The federal government’s push to control health costs through “comparative effectiveness” research could threaten advances in personalized medicine, in which treatments are individualized to each patient. – Forbes.com

Forbes talks about how a team of political men will be assembled to run studies and do research upon different treatments and procedures. In some cases, the treatments that do not perform well will no longer be allowed. The decision making that a concierge physician makes every day; the ones that are personalized to each individual patient, are at odds with the broad approach of healthcare reform.

“If there’s a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that’s going to make you well?” But patients and their ailments vary, so the choice is rarely that easy. –Forbes.com

Sure, doing the needed research to find out what, of the billions, treatments actually work and what are a waste of time and money. But, how do you even began to run that research when each individual patient has a different response to treatment, different allergies to drugs, different physiologies, and different side effects. There just isn’t a way to run a scientific study, with the needed homogenious study group, that represents the entirety of our American population. We are far too unique to be catagorized.

Hypothetically, the research group could find a treatment that saved your daughter’s life unnecessary because it didn’t produce results within the study. That is what many are worried about when it comes to healthcare reform. What works for some may not work for others.

It’s for this reason, and many others, that personalized medicine and concierge doctors and popping up all over the nation. Patients want individualized care; the kind of care that actually takes into account each person’s unique physiology and family history. This kind of healthcare checks your allergies and drug responses before prescribing you something that reacts with another drug.    

Perhaps this approach towards healthcare reform will save some money by eliminating certain procedures. But truly, in the long run when patients are needing extra care because certain treatments aren’t available anymore, it will cost us all a whole lot more. Not to mention the lack of innovation and invention of new and more effective drugs that will occur due to this healthcare reform bill.

For more information on how you can protect your healthcare, or how you can find a concierge doctor in your area, visit http://www.SignatureMD.com today.