The impacts of these shortages are likely to hit rural communities hardest. Two recent studies published in JAMA and Annals of Surgery found that 99 million Americans already struggle to find “timely, high-quality and affordable surgical care.”
States and individual municipalities have spearheaded their own efforts to address care gaps in their communities.
Here are five recent efforts to close address the physician shortage:
1. Havana, Fla., a rural community of 1,750 people lost its only family physician after Mark Newberry, MD, retired in December after 30 years of practice in the town. Leaders in Havana have taken initiative to find a new physician by taking out ads in local newspapers, posting notices on social media and offering a rent-free medical office equipped with an X-ray, ultrasound machine and bone density scanner, CBS News reported Feb. 11.
Gadsden County, where Havana is located, has one of the lowest physician-to-resident ratios in the state. Florida is projected to be short of nearly 18,000 physicians — including 6,000 primary care physicians — by 2035.
2. State lawmakers in Iowa are considering several bills that aim to address the state’s growing physician shortage. Iowa ranked 44th in the nation for patient-to-physician ratio in 2023, with 233 physicians per 100,000 patients. The bills would address several aspects of the shortage by requiring universities to interview residency candidates from the state and possibly shortening some four-year medical school programs into three-year programs to expedite residents’ pathways to practice. One of the bills would also expand funding for residency slots in the state and double funding for loan repayment programs.
3. Massachusetts recently passed the Physicians Pathway Act, which will allow foreign-trained physicians to practice medicine in the state by removing barriers like requirements of repeating residency programs in the U.S. The law is part of a larger economic development bill signed by Gov. Maura Healey in November.
4. The Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston recently broke ground on a new medical school building, which is expected to be completed in the summer of 2027. The expansion was developed with the goal of combatting a projected 3,500 physician shortage by the end of the decade.
5. Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health, the largest rural healthcare system in the U.S., has made numerous efforts to close the rural healthcare gap in the state.
The system’s first step toward value-based care was 26 years ago with its “provider-owned and operated” nonprofit healthcare plan. Sanford utilizes a combination of both fee-for-service and value-based arrangements to create a more broadly accessible system, including pay-for-performance programs, shared savings models and upside-down risk agreements with collaborating payers.
