Tackling physician shortage by retraining non-active physicians

In the effort to curtail the physician shortage, the industry is making a play for physicians who have left active practice.

Created by a team of professors at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, the Physician Retraining & Reentry program is an online education program that aims to ready experienced doctors for vacant primary care positions nationwide.

The program officially launched last spring with the graduation of three students who had participated in the “beta” version, said David Bazzo, MD, who serves on the program’s advisory board as the chief medical officer.

Three dozen physicians with a variety of backgrounds are currently in various stages of the program, which is self-paced. Participants are expected to complete 15 online subject matter modules and pass each based on attaining a minimal score. Following the completion of the modules, there is an examination and an on-site practical evaluation of clinical skills.

“What we’re trying to do here is take a physician that has been in practice and update their skills and knowledge so that they are current on all the latest screening and treatment and diagnostic protocols in a specialty that they haven’t done. That’s where the intensity comes in – filling in the knowledge gaps on the skills and training they have gathered over a career,” Bazzo said.

The Physician Retraining & Reentry program will offer personal benefit to physicians who have left the workforce and want to re-enter with up-to-date skills, but it likely won’t have much impact on the nation’s physician shortage, said Peter Angood, CEO of the American College of Physician Executives.

First of all, the physician shortage is estimated to fairly large and this is just one program with a small number of participants, he said.

Secondly, there’s an image problem. Many of the program participants voluntarily left the workforce for various reasons. There may be a public misperception that these physicians are in a “sort of remedial training,” he said. “There needs to be an organized management of the perceptions and an organized management of the expectations of the public so that it doesn’t get misconstrued that these are subpar physicians trying to catch up.”

Ultimately, said Angood, healthcare needs more physicians being created in the first place at the entry level. And it is at that traditional medical school level that the physician shortage must be solved.