The Department of Defense (DoD) has continued to experience a shortage of physicians working in military service branches. The deficiency may cause a lapse in patient access to care. The human resource division in the military has been developing approaches to remedy the problem. The DoD’s overall approach to addressing the shortage focuses on the individual service components, relying on scholarship programs to attract and retain physicians (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2018). The DoD offers scholarship programs in exchange for four years of service in the military. After the four-year contract expires, the DoD provides lucrative bonuses to retain exceptional care providers. The scholarship programs have not effectively attracted an adequate number of physicians to address the existing shortage. The program fails to incorporate a targeted and coordinated approach to meet critical physician shortages (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2018). I believe that the DoD’s HR should develop novel techniques that alleviate gaps in the number of physician specialists to ensure that military service members can access quality and specialized treatment.
Health care institutions in rural areas have found it challenging to recruit and retain physician specialists. Numerous care institutions have been forced to reduce or eliminate specialty services or hire temporary physicians because of gaps in the number of physician specialists (Terry & Brown, 2016). HR divisions in hospitals must develop novel approaches to attract new medical professionals and offer training and development programs to improve their competencies. I believe that collaborative efforts between hospitals in rural areas and medical schools will be essential in bridging the existing gap. Collaborative efforts should focus on developing graduate medical education (GME) programs to assist alumni and graduating seniors in securing suitable hospital residency positions (Graduate medical education (GME), 2021). The medical schools will supervise all the residencies. The approach will benefit hospitals because senior resident physicians offer better care than mid-level hospital providers. The programs allow care institutions to expand key service lines to provide better care to patients (Terry & Brown, 2016). GME programs also help organizations reduce operating costs since residents are less expensive than full-time physicians. Collaborative efforts between hospitals and medical schools will be critical in recruiting and retaining physicians with the capacity to offer better care to patients.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
References
Graduate medical education (GME). (2021). Howard University . https://medicine.howard.edu/education/graduate-medical-education-gme
Terry, R. & Brown, N. (2016). Growing your own: Hospital recruitment and retention. Physician Leadership Journal 3(2) 44-48.
U.S. Government Accountability Office (2018). Military personnel: Additional actions needed to address gaps in military physician specialties. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-18-77
