$5 million bill passes to decrease physician shortage

Long wait times, few appointments, and having to leave the county for a doctor’s visit, are only a few reasons why Arizona lawmakers agree Yuma needs more medical professionals.

Yesterday, lawmakers in Phoenix passed a bill providing $5 million in funds specifically for Yuma.

This money will allow opportunities for an increase in the doctors and nurses practicing in the county.

An increase that is not only needed locally but nationally as well.

According to Dr. Bharat Magu, chief medical officer, vice president of medical affairs, “it’s projected that the United States we’ll have close to 110,000 physician shortages over the next 10 years,” he said.

This shortage is due to several factors.

“Number one is the population aging in general, on the same lines , the physician population is also aging. So just in Yuma, for example, we are projecting that close to 25% of our physician positions in the community will be in the retirement age group within the next 5 to 10 years,” Dr. Magu said.

Here in Yuma, the doctor to patient ratio is 2,700 to 1.

Though the quality of care has not decreased, the need for that care has.

“Our community is growing older, their medical needs are more so even though the population overall may not be increasing [their needs are],” Dr. Magu said.

There are several medical areas in which YRMC is looking to expand on using the $5 million allotted for Graduate Medical Education, or residency programs.

“We transfer close to 700 patients out of this hospital to Tucson or Phoenix in an ambulance every year so that they can get acute treatment and that’s a big disservice to the community,” Dr. Magu said.

YRMC plans to use the GME program to encourage medical professionals to come to Yuma.

According to Magu, nearly all medical students who finish YRMC’s post-graduate training stay in-state, and 67% stay in Yuma to practice.

“We want to add new specialties for training like psychiatric care and emergency medicine over time to really meet our needs here,” Dr. Magu said.

If fully funded, YRMC’s residency program will have 50 fully trained doctors after 5 years.

Dr. Kristina Diaz, a family medicine physician, director of graduate medical education, program director for family community medicine residency program, works closely with GME programs.

These new funds will help run the day to day operations for residency students and faculty.

“We get a certain stipend amount per resident to assist with their training so that money goes towards their salary, it goes towards the salary of the faculty members that are training them, it also goes towards even just the federal general function of the clinic that they work in,” Dr. Diaz said.

Dr. Diaz also hopes to use the funding to increase the number of students who can graduate from the residency program each year.

“We started out with a program that’s six per year, we are hoping that with this bill and funding, to be able to increase from six people per year to eight per year which will take our total number of residence to 24,” Dr. Diaz said, “we do have six slots per year, [and] we receive over 2,500 applications for those slots and so imagine how many physicians could potential have been interested in coming to Yuma,” she continued.

Before these funds can be accepted, the bill will go to the floor to determine specific amounts for the budget.

YRMC encourages people affected by the physician shortage to submit support for the bill.