Coming changes in health care education?

YaleGradandDad
Sat, 09 Feb 2013 09:07:24 +0000

I don’t know this for sure and have not read it anywhere, but I think that much of primary care will be done at the nursing or PA level as insurance plans and Medicare/Medicaid look for more ways to reduce costs.



Payment for physician services has declined substantially over the past 40 years. This has been mitigated by efforts to increase productivity and a move towards specialization into fields with procedures for U.S. graduates. One way to increase productivity is to use lesser trained and paid staff to provide services when that is reasonable. When I was a kid my dentist cleaned my teeth but now a hygienist does that and the dentist pops in for the final five minutes of the visit. Physicians will increasingly be used for diagnosis and determining a treatment plan and all the efforts to collect that data beforehand and implement that plan will likely be largely delegated. Becoming a physician assistant after four years of college and a two years master is a very attractive profession.

With regard to the MCAT changes you mention above, there will be requirements for biochemistry, statistics, and psychology that are not needed now. Some schools are revamping their pre-med track to include those courses or just tweaking existing classes.