Loan forgiveness -- is it enough to lure more into primary care?

While a loan forgiveness program is wonderful incentive, it does not address how to keep physicians who have practiced primary care for years in this specialty. These doctors are seasoned, and therefore very valuable, but unfortunately more and more susceptible to burn out. These doctors also must be offered incentive.

According to your post it's not really loan forgiveness. It's an anonymous donor offering to pay off some of your loans if you go into certain fields? That needs to be clear because If it was loan forgiveness then I as a tax payer would be off the wall. That said, would the 60k make up for a lifetime of earning less? Probably not.
The real answer is to have the AMA partition who can go where. They do it in accepting kids into Med school. Then do it in specialties. Plus if all Dr.s are going into specialties. Why arn't the fees coming down with the increase of compitition. All smoke and mirrors that's why.

Loan forgiveness is a common incentive to attract physicians (and nurses, and other health professionals) to underserved areas. There is a nationwide shortage of primary care and it is projected to get much worse in the next decade. Help with loans is good, but studies show that the best help for attracting med students into primary care is accepting students into med school who are interested in the start, and who want to continue to live in underserved areas that they came from.

rlsrd, you sound uneducated and your post was very difficult to follow. Please re-type your thoughts using correct grammar and spelling.

On topic: I think loan forgiveness would help sway some students into general practice. There are also tax breaks, or simply mandatory general-practice periods post graduation.

As a nurse practitioner in family practice, believe me we need more clinicians in primary care who are committed to being here. I agree that medical school admission should include consideration of a passion for primary care in addition to research or specialties, and these medical students should be treated respectfully, irregardless of the financial realities of chosen field. A not so subtle disrespect of primary care starts early.

Loan forgiveness is an excellent idea. There are few other incentives for working with the populations that are needy or unable to take part in their own healthcare. I believe that any program should also include Mental Health Counselors, Nurses, Social Workers and other medical "clinicians" who daily strive to bring understanding and help into the lives of everyday people. I am a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor in Vermont and everyday I hear of other therapists in my area who will not see people on Medicaid or Medicare. The work is harder it is true, and the pay is usually half that of other insurers. I believe this would bring a good incentive for those who are new to the field and those of us who have been working in it for many years. Bravo!

rlsrd: by "partition" are you implying that the med school admission offices get together and decide which applicants will go where? Just to be clear, there is no match process for medical school admission as there is for residency.

Harvard providing money to encourage med students into primary care is a drop in the bucket but better than nothing. But perhaps other donors, the government, the AMA, etc. will slowly begin to see that the system needs to change. So it's a good start, HMS, but the public looks to you and all other AAMC schools to do more.

if the salaries of primary care doctors, radiologists and anesthesiogists were the same, the problem would be solved.

America gets what it pays for: it reimburses alot for specialty care and very little for primary care. As the field of primary care is getting worse with the shortage of family physicians, mid-level practitioners will have to fill-in this void. However, given their levels of training and education, how could any health policy maker in the right mind expect them to care for elderly patients w/ multiple complex advanced illnesses. But this is the trend that this nation is heading toward....

As a student at one of the city's 3 med schools, I've found that you can lump med students into 3 broad categories as far as primary care is concerned (at least at my institution): The gung-ho for family medicine, granola munching, Canada is awesome types; the liberal, upper-middle class, guilty about health disparities types and the folks who like something about the various specialties (either the science, the money or the procedures).

No amount of loan repayment incentive is going to change the attitude of the last group. Similarly, the vast majority of the (small) first group will do some form of primary care no matter what. Its great to incentivize and reward them for this, but it doesn't actually increase the number of PCPs in the field.

If you want to increase the number of medical students entering primary care, you either need to increase the number of students from the first group (as an earlier poster suggested) or target your incentives at the middle group. These are students who willingly support all the 'right' causes and talk about how important primary care is but around 3rd year figure out pretty quick that they can make more money and have a better life style if they eschew primary care. For many of them, entering primary care would actually make them WORSE off financially and in terms of free/family time than their parents. As long as primary care represents a step back for them in terms of money, time and reputation compared to how they grew up, these kids are not going to be clamouring for positions in primary care.

They should only let our doctors work 8 hours, They have to work 16hr days and not get paid as much as a nurse for number of years in residency to be a doctor, we need doctors ,loans are hard on them and residency to work 16 hours a day for low wages punishment for being a doctor they do not get sleep and rest they need.

As someone who manages the money of many doctors this is a reoccurring theme. The debt load is incredible. In the long run the loan forgiveness program never makes up for simple market investments on a “specialty physicians” extra salary. Until more can be done to fix this issue, I don’t blame any young medical student for leaning toward the better income.

Leave it to this Dr Lawrence to arrogantly critique someone’s posting. Guess it speaks to the blatant communication issues many doctors have… A simple “couldn’t follow your posting” would have done just fine.

I think that doctors should be paid a salary. Those that spent 3 years in residency could make 100,000, those that spent 4 years in residency could make 120,000 and so on. That way, the difference in income between specialties would not be so great. But, here's the catch: all doctors would go to school tuition-free and only be obliged to take out loans for living expenses. That way, medical students would just take out loans for what they needed, but at the same time be able to pay it back when they start work. The loans would be interest-free and would be taken out of their paychecks like taxes until they were paid back. Since a large part of health care costs is driven by doctors trying to get rich, if they were working for a salary, that would take away that incentive and lower costs by about one half, if the article in the New Yorker this week is correct.

Emily has obviously never been to med school. If you take the high earning potential, then you are not going to get the best minds to practice medicine. I know we Drs should be altruistic, but after 4 yrs of undergrad, 4 years of med school and 3 yrs of working 80 hr work weeks, I think we have the skill to accept our high income. The New Yorker is absolutely wrong. Here is a thought...lower my malpractice insurance and then we will talk. RIDICULOUS!!!!