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Health Professional Shortage Areas, Health Status, and Reform
Patrick Dowling, MD, MPH
Arch Fam Med. 1995;4(8):677-679.
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THE NATION'S supply of physicians and their geographic distribution has been a topic of concern for many years. Federal policies that supported the expansion of existing medical schools and the creation of new ones were initiated more than three decades ago under former President Lyndon Johnson in an attempt to rectify a perceived shortage of physicians.1
Once it was recognized that large segments of the population lacked access to primary care, the federal government began to develop specific programs to increase the supply of primary care physicians through Title VII of the Public Health Service Act. That was followed in 1976 by legislation that addressed the geographic maldistribution of physicians through the establishment of a formal mechanism, with explicit criteria for the designation of an area, a population group, or a facility as lacking an adequate number of primary care practitioners. This designation, health manpower shortage area, was later changed to
. . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]
Author Affiliations
Los Angeles County Harbor—UCLA Medical Center University of California—Los Angele School of Medicine
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