SPRINGFIELD – Doctors find it is twice as hard to recruit colleagues to work in the Pioneer Valley compared with Greater Boston, according to the results of a survey released Wednesday by the Massachusetts Medical Society.
Recruiting doctors to Berkshire County is three times as hard, doctors said in a survey that also revealed that 77 percent of Massachusetts physicians find their careers in medicine rewarding, a one-percent drop from 2012’s finding.
Seventy-five percent of responding physicians in Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin counties told The Massachusetts Medical Society that the pool of available physicians from which they recruit is inadequate. That makes this the second-most difficult labor market in the state. Half the doctors here said it is difficult to retain staff and 40 percent said it was difficult to fill vacancies.
The most difficult doctor-labor market in Massachusetts is in Berkshire County, where 78 percent said the pool of available doctors is too small, 47 percent said it is difficult to retain staff and and 43 percent said it is difficult to fill vacancies.
In Worcester, 56.9 percent of all doctors think there is an inadequate pool of physicians willing to take jobs. The statewide average is 55 percent.
“It’s extremely challenging,” said Dr. Scott A. Wolf, senior vice president of medical affairs, chief medical officer and chief operating officer at Mercy Medical Center in Springfield and the Sisters of Providence Health System. “Recruitment of all specialties, especially primary care, takes up a lot of my time.”
But a lack of available doctors also makes it difficult for the average patient, Wolf said. He cited a Massachusetts Medical Society study from July that showed the average wait time for a new patient appointment with a family physician in Hampden County is 58 days, up from 48 in the 2012 survey.
“We have an emergency room here at Mercy with 80,000 visits a year,” Wolf said. “A lot of that is due to poor access to general primary care. You have issues that people should be addressing with their primary care doctor and they come to the emergency room.”
Massachusetts Medical Society President Dr. Ronald W. Dunlap, who practices in Weymouth and lives in Norwell, said too many Western Massachusetts residents depend on public health insurance, like MassHealth, for their care. The reimbursements are simply too low to attract new doctors.
“To a certain extent you might be a victim of the socioeconomic situation,” Dunlap said. “If you are in independent practice it is hard to keep your doors open with such a low margin.”
The average student debt load for a doctor is $175,000, Dunlap said. So three quarters of those graduating residency programs choose salaried positions with big medical organizations.
“The days of just hanging out your shingle in Pittsfield are over,” he said. “It’s just hard to make that work today.”
The medical society advocates for debt relief, especially for doctors who go into family medicine and primary care.
“A lot of those programs already exist,” he said. “But we have to do a better job getting our medical residents interested. We train a lot of residents in this state. We just can’t keep them.”
Wolf acknowledges that it is a doctor’s market. But he has had success bringing doctors to Mercy if he concentrates on prospects with ties to the area. They possibly have family here, or went to college here or trained at Baystate Medical Center.
The state could make his job easier if it streamlined the process of getting a Massachusetts medical license, Wolf said. Other states get new doctors licensed much more quickly.
“I’ve lost doctors who wanted to come here because of that very issue,” Wolf said.
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