The growing doctor shortage across the nation is especially acute in Michigan and a new study finds that the Great Lakes State could be hurt the most by the loss of new physicians from overseas caused by President Trump’s travel ban.

A group of Harvard and MIT graduate students in economics analyzed data on licensed physicians working in the United States who are from the six countries the Trump administration is temporarily barring travel from with its new executive order: Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Libya.

The researchers found there are 7,000 doctors in the U.S. from those banned countries. They provide about 14 million medical appointments a year for patients.

There are 1.2 million doctors’ appointments in Michigan alone provided by these physicians, according to one of the researchers, Peter Ganong. That puts Michigan No. 1 on the list (see county-by-county U.S. map here) and neighboring Ohio is not far behind at 880,000 appointments. Ganong told WBUR-FM radio in Boston that the Rust Belt Midwest is where most of these foreign-born doctors – some who initially came here as medical students or to serve a hospital residency — are concentrated.

“… I think this is an area that has a dearth of physicians, and when there’s demand and no supply, immigrants will help us to basically address that gap in the medical workforce,” Ganong said in the Tuesday interview with WBUR, Boston’s NPR station.

“… The bottom line, I think, is that we should be very concerned about the consequences of this executive order for patient care,” he added. “One sort of particularly striking irony that has come out of our research is that some of the states where these doctors that we’ve talked about are most concentrated are Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia. These are states that voted for Trump. These are states where Trump supporters, in polls, seem to support the executive order. And I think it’s a sad irony that this is the places they’ll be most hurt, potentially, in terms of medical care by the executive order.”

Though the travel ban may last only four months, the message it sends could discourage immigrants in the medical profession from coming to America.

Because of the doctor shortage, projections show that within the next 10 years the U.S. will need between 15,000 and 35,000 more doctors. By 2025 Michigan alone will be about 8,000 doctors short of the population’s needs.

According to GeneralMedicine.com, the aging Baby Boomer population is the cause of the problems in Michigan. The baby boom demographic is now aging and approaching retirement. “Naturally, the older we get the more medical attention we require,” the website notes, “causing an increased number of visits to medical practices and hospitals, as well as an increase in the complexity of health problems, therefore requiring more attention from more medical staff. In other words, as the Baby Boomer generation continues to age there is a greater demand for doctors.”

But it isn’t simply more patients needing more care that is responsible for the shortage of doctors in Michigan. Many doctors are Baby Boomers, too. Of the 29,000 doctors currently working in Michigan, 7,250 are age 60 or older. This means that 25% of Michigan doctors are on the brink of retirement, leaving the healthcare profession permanently.

 

 

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