Don’t Forget CEO Input in the MD and Nurse Supply Debate

Don’t Forget CEO Input in the MD and Nurse Supply Debate

Marcia Faller, for HealthLeaders News, May 22, 2007

When it comes to physician supply, healthcare policy analysts and academics are divided into two camps. One camp believes that the United States has a sufficient number of physicians to meet its needs. The other believes we need to train more doctors. What these experts think is important, because the analyses and opinions they generate affect government policy.

For example, the proposed 2008 federal budget cites the sufficient amount of physicians as a reason for reducing government funding of medical residency programs through Medicaid. Budget planners apparently are in the first camp referenced above. Curiously, the proposed 2008 budget also calls for cuts in funding for nurse training, even though healthcare experts are virtually unanimous in agreeing that the United States is in the midst of a serious nurse shortage.


Analysts and academics have various ways of determining the national need for doctors and nurses, many of them driven by formulas and statistics. What these formulas sometimes omit, however, is input from hospital administrators who are responsible for ensuring that their facilities have enough doctors and nurses to meet patients’ needs...