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State Looks For Health System Cures
November 10, 2013
Baby boomers are getting older. So are primary-care doctors and nurses. And Florida’s population continues to grow.
That combination could create a prescription for problems in Florida’s health-care system during the next two decades.
A House committee Wednesday began studying the complex set of issues, as it looks for ways to make sure the state has enough doctors and other health-care workers to meet its needs. It’s too early to know what the committee will recommend, but ideas range from taking steps to train — and keep — more doctors in Florida to using new technology such as telemedicine.
State economist Amy Baker presented information to the committee that pointed toward problems as the state moves toward 2030, the year when the first batch of baby boomers will hit their mid-80s. By that time, Florida’s population is projected to grow to 23.6 million from the 2012 total of roughly 19 million, and nearly a quarter of the residents are expected to be ages 65 or older.
Baker said baby boomers will be relatively healthy and have financial assets when they first retire, but they will need more health-care services and their bank accounts will shrink as 2030 gets closer. The baby boom generally includes people born from 1946 to 1964.
“We’re at the very front end of this demographic shift,” Baker said.
The health-care system’s needs, however, involve far more factors than just a growing and aging population. As an example, the federal Affordable Care Act is designed to help uninsured people get coverage, which likely means they will go more often to doctors.
Also, information presented to the committee showed that, overall, primary-care doctors and nurses are aging. That points to many younger physicians choosing specialties instead of primary care.
“What I see there is our younger physicians are increasingly moving away from primary care,” Rep. Cary Pigman, an Avon Park Republican who is a physician, said about some of the data presented to the committee.
House Speaker Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, created the Select Committee on Health Care Workforce Innovation in July, with his office saying the panel “will study and pursue solutions for ensuring access to the right care in the right setting, including methods for increasing the number of practitioners educated in Florida, allowing practitioners to practice to the full extent of their education and training, and attracting a world-class health care workforce to Florida.”
It remains unclear, however, how lawmakers will carry out that mission, and health-care lobbyists fanned out across a committee room to listen Wednesday. Ideas such as shifting responsibilities from doctors to other types of medical professionals — a possible way the state could try to meet some of the needs — often touch off lobbying battles in Tallahassee.
The Florida Medical Association, a politically powerful physicians group, has started circulating a list of proposals to help address the shortage of primary-care doctors and nurses. Among them: Increase funding for medical residency programs so that more primary-care doctors would be able to finish their training in the state, with the hope they would then stay in Florida to practice.
Another FMA proposal would involve expanding the use of telemedicine, with doctors being able to use new technology to care for patients online. A major shift into telemedicine, however, would require addressing a series of sticky issues such as ensuring patient privacy and determining whether insurance companies would pay for telemedicine like they do for face-to-face treatment.
by Jim Saunders, The News Service of Florida
Comments
4 Responses to “State Looks For Health System Cures”
They really need to cure old age while we are still young.
That should reduce medical expenses.
Get ready for more foreign doctors that you can’t understand.
Interesting.
The Florida Medical Association, representing “politically powerful” physicians, is asking the Republican-dominated Florida Legislature to increase funding for medical residency programs. And, of course, how many medical doctors do you know Who are Democrats?
Is this not another example of a subsidy that Republicans are so vocally opposed to?
I would think every Republican and Tea Party participant would bristle at such a suggestion y Republicans.
Between my Mom and me I have had many BAD experiences with nurse practitioners, including one who put me on heart medication when it was my thyroid which needed treatment. He almost killed me! I truely hope they will not go this route.