What’s wrong with American medical schools?
In today’s Martin Center article, Jay Greene addresses that question. The big problem is that we are not graduating enough doctors.
He writes,
America’s medical schools do not train enough doctors, creating a growing shortage of quality physicians. This shortage is widely recognized and lamented, but the cause of the problem is often misdiagnosed. Observers from all ends of the political spectrum blame Congress, which “capped” subsidies for medical residencies in 1997. In reality, there are simply not enough U.S. medical school graduates.
As a result, we have had to rely more and more on doctors trained in medical schools in other countries. There is good reason to question the quality of their training.
Greene explains:
Foreign medical schools are not subject to any comparable oversight. They may be accredited by an entity in their own country, but we cannot be sure that these oversight organizations strictly enforce standards regarding classroom instruction or clinical training experiences. If there are problems with the quality of instruction for a medical school in the U.S., those problems can be brought to the accreditors and then ultimately the federal government to ensure that they are addressed. The same is not true if there is subpar instruction in foreign medical schools.
American medical schools expand. Their leaders evidently believe that maintaining their elite status is more important than trying to solve the nation’s shortage of top-quality doctors.