- There is an increasing problem for older Americans: doctors who specialize in geriatric care decreases.
- More than 80 million Americans should be over 65 years old by 2050, according to US Census Bureau.
- However, the geriatricians are rare, which could complicate access to care.
Jerry Gurwitz, a 68 -year -old geriatrician based in the Massachusetts, is at a delicate moment in his career.
He has spent decades to take care of older Americans, but now, while Gurwitz tackles the age of some of his own patients, he sees a brewing problem with his profession: there are not many people ready to take his work, and he has serious doubts about whether there will be enough doctors to carefully take care of people, he said to Business Insider.
Gurwitz, who obtained his medicine diploma in 1983, said that he saw this problem brewing decades ago when he finished his medical studies. Part of the reason for which he chose to specialize in geriatric medicine was because practically few people were interested in the field, he said, a trend that has not improved more than forty years later.
“These people will retire. There is no substantial interest on the part of the trainees to go to the field,” he said about the geriatrician offer today. “I do not see how the health system will not be exceeded during the next decade. It will be too much and too many people to take care.”
Health professionals say that the problem has been doing for years, the supply of doctors formed specifically to treat the elderly far from keeping the pace with an American population that ages quickly.
There is no clear path to approach the shortage, said Gurwitz. He and other health professionals told BI that the influx of older patients could lead to a crisis in the quality of care.
The problem is visible in the figures.
According to an estimate of the American Gériatrics Society, the United States will need 30,000 geriatricians by the end of the decade. However, the total number of Gériatriciens certified on the board of directors decreased to around 7,400 in 2022, according to the American board of medicalties, against around 10,000 at the beginning of the century – and the American population is growing quickly.
According to the latest projections, the number of Americans aged 65 and over is expected to increase to 82 million by 2050, up 47% compared to the levels of 2022.
Timothy Farrell, geriatrician and professor of medicine at the University of Utah, says that signs of pressure on the profession have increased for years, but have become more serious recently.
In all areas, waiting times have gone longer, the average wait for a doctor’s appointment to 26 days, according to a survey in 2022, up 8% in five years.
“We could probably double our space, and we would be very quickly filled,” said Farrell, adding that he thought that stress in the geriatric unit could be higher than in other regions of the hospital.
R. Sean Morrison, geriatrician at Mount Sinai, says that he knows others in industry that say they have waiting lists that extend for six months.
The tension of care for the elderly is particularly obvious in nursing homes. A survey of more than 400 nursing houses led by the American Health Care Association revealed that 72% had fewer employees in 2024 than before the pandemic.
The survey also showed that 57% of nursing homes said they had a waiting list, 46% said they started to limit their consumption of residents and that 7% said they were diverting patients daily.
“We don’t have it for the moment, and we will unfortunately never have enough people trained,” said Morrison. “This is highlighted by the time it takes for an appointment in our geriatric practices. It is demonstrated by the number of elderly people who must be taken in the hospital that hospital services do not have the capacity to see. And it is just the tip of the iceberg.”
A declining medical profession
Gurwitz says he had always wanted to be a geriatrician, but the feeling is rare among health professionals. The data from the national resident correspondence program has shown that only 174 of the 419 positions available in geriatric specialty programs were completed in 2023, making it one of the most unparalified programs by the organization.
It is not easy to convince people to specialize in the field.
On the one hand, the profession does not pay as much as certain specializations. According to Salary.com data, the median salary of a geriatric doctor in New York has oscillated about $ 264,163. This represents less than half of the median salary of a cardiologist in New York, which amounted to $ 573,498 per year on March 1.
There is also a perception that medicine in geriatrics is a less distinctive area than other areas, said Gurwitz.
“I think there are certain areas of medicine which are more prestigious in which they are more respected than others. Geriatrics, for one reason or another, is not among those,” he added.
Farrell said he thought that the complexity of the treatment of older patients could be another factor distant from trade professionals. Geriatricians treat the elderly who generally have overlapping health problems, some patients taking up to 20 drugs, he said.
“How do you prevent falls? How do you manage several chronic conditions for the same person?” He said. “I think there are people in primary care who have more or less comfort with the complexity that deals with complex and elderly adults, and this is what the geriatrician is formed to do.”
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