With projections for a continued primary care shortage — especially with the upcoming expansion of patients with new access to health care — established providers are growing more worried about who’s going to train new primary care doctors.
Residency programs that train medical graduates have limited capacity, and the federal government frequently threatens to do away with graduate medical education funding entirely.
“All of the projections out there — because of the aging population, the obesity in our population, the health needs in the future — we’re gonna need more doctors,” said Dr. Russell Maier, director of Central Washington Family Medicine. “They’re going to have to come from somewhere.”