Rural Physician Staffing Challenges and Solutions
Rural physician staffing has always been something of a challenge in the United States. As with professional sports teams, opera companies and gourmet restaurants, physicians tend to be located more frequently in large urban centers than they do in smaller, rural communities.
However, recent years have seen this rural physician staffing become even more of a challenge, as the ongoing physician shortage continues to hit rural areas particularly hard. There are now more than 6,080 health care professional shortage areas (HPSAs) for primary care in the United States — that's about double the number identified by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) 15 years ago.
In this white paper, Staff Care's thought leaders examine rural physician staffing challenges in detail, and propose an in-depth set of solutions, including maintaining networking connections with clinicians already in the community; creating relationships with residency programs; utilizing NRHA resources; and others.