More U.S. med schools, fewer opportunities?

My brother-in-law, Tom, brought this article from the NY Times to my attention. It discusses the expected surge in new U.S. medical schools. Some takeaway points:


During the 1980s and ’90s only one new medical school was established...If all the schools being proposed [today] actually opened, they would amount to an 18 percent increase in the 131 medical schools across the country...And beyond the new schools, many existing schools are expanding enrollment, sometimes through branch campuses...

The proliferation of new schools is...a market response to a rare convergence of forces: a growing population; the aging of the health-conscious baby-boom generation; the impending retirement of, by some counts, as many as a third of current doctors; and the expectation that, the present political climate notwithstanding, changes in health care policy will eventually bring a tide of newly insured patients into the American health care system...

Many of the developing medical schools...are billing themselves as different from traditional medical schools, more focused on serving primary care needs in immigrant and disadvantaged communities. Administrators say that they expect that approach to be buttressed by a shift in state and federal reimbursements from specialists to primary care doctors....

Whether the demand for new medical schools exists among patients, it clearly exists among prospective doctors...The Association of American Medical Colleges, a trade group, has called for a 30 percent increase in enrollment, or about 5,000 more doctors a year. The association’s Center for Workforce Studies estimates that 3,500 more M.D.s will enter graduate training over the next 10 years...


Although the article points out that new schools in the U.S. will supply physicians for residency programs that would otherwise have to recruit international students, both Tom and I are weary that there will be enough residency spots for the higher demand. Either way, this is certainly a positive sign for anyone hoping to get into med school in the next few years.