Did You Know Healthcare Loans Are Shown to Reduce Medical Workforce Shortages?

According to a 2019 report from the AAMC, the US will experience a shortage of 122,000 physicians in the next 12 years. Demand for physicians is steadily outgrowing supply. And aging baby boomers and improved life expectancy in tobacco smokers and obese individuals may be to blame.

Your hospital needs to prepare for this shortage. One strategy for doing so is to reduce the physician workload, freeing up valuable time to take care of patients. That means you need to start outsourcing.

If you’re gearing up for the projected shortage in physicians, keep reading to find out how health care loans can help.

The Workforce Shortage

The AAMC’s report suggested that the physician shortage will affect primary and specialty providers at similar rates.

And among specialty physicians, pathologists, neurologists, radiologists, and psychiatrists will experience the largest shortage, followed by surgical specialists and medical specialists.

Worse, rural and underserved regions are expected to bear the brunt of the shortage. The report calculates that 100,000 new physicians would be needed to offset the disproportionate effect on these areas.

Yet even with this equalization, the fact remains that the physician shortage will affect all places of care. So what can you do?

Outsourcing with Programs Like Health Care Loans

Proposed solutions to the physician shortage have included:

• Broadening the nurse practitioner and physician assistant role
• Changing the state-based licensing restrictions
• Providing more scholarships for prospective physicians

But putting these strategies into place is more than often out of your hands. You can, however, play a role in reducing demands on physicians’ time. How? By outsourcing time-consuming administrative duties like billing and collections.

Epic River’s health care loans can assist you in offloading BIR activities. That way, you have more time to get back to doing what you do best—caring for patients.

If you need a solution to help mitigate the ever-growing physician shortage, get in touch to find out how our patient lending program can help.