W hen Rosemarie Peelle learned it would be eight weeks before she could see her neurologist
       about her nagging neck pain, she knew what to do. Peelle asked her husband, Kenneth, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, to pull a few strings. He called the doctor, who agreed to see Peelle the next day.

That’s how it’s sometimes done. But for patients lacking connections, it has become increasingly difficult to schedule an office visit or even to find a doctor. A survey by Merritt, Hawkins & Associates, a physician search firm, found that patients in 15 large cities waited an average of more than three weeks to schedule a gynecological checkup. According to a 2006 study in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, the mean wait time to get a changing mole checked out in Boston was 73.4 days. It has even reached the point at which having an in may not get you in. “Even for physicians and trustees, it’s increasingly difficult to get primary care appointments for family and friends,” says internist Brit Nicholson, chief medical officer of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston.

Many experts worry that such reports, though anecdotal, foretell an impending crisis, a national shortage of physicians that will worsen just when an aging population most needs ready access to medical care. At least one estimate predicts the physician shortfall could reach 200,000 by 2020, almost a quarter of the 850,000 doctors now practicing in the United States.

Of particular concern are the 30 million people who live in areas designated by the federal government as medically underserved. In Alaska, which has a third fewer physicians than it currently needs, demand will nearly double during the next two decades, according to one study. “It takes about four months for a new patient to see me,” says internist Ross Tanner, president of the Alaska State Medical Association, who runs one of only four diabetes clinics in the state.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. A generation ago, the worry was that there would be too many doctors, not too few, and schools began limiting enrollment to reduce the glut. Yet now there are fewer physicians each year relative to the rising population, and a disproportionate number of doctors are nearing retirement, to be replaced by young physicians, who seem disinclined to work the slavish hours put in by old-timers.

To counter projected shortages, there’s a proposal to graduate a third more doctors in the coming decade, and a push to increase residency training slots. But these plans raise a host of issues. Upping medical school enrollment will take a while, and there’s no guarantee the additional physicians won’t gravitate to high-paying specialties and geographic regions that have plenty of doctors. Already, the lure of lucrative specialties has cut the number of graduates choosing family medicine by 50% since 1997. “We can create all the jobs we want, but the incentives aren’t there for young doctors to take them,” says Rick Kellerman, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. Moreover, adding training slots in any specialty raises the question of where the money will come from at a time when Congress is bent on cutting the budget for Medicare, which funds most residency training. 

That points to another problem. Health care costs are projected to increase from today’s 16% of the gross domestic product to 20% by 2015, and to keep growing much faster than the overall economy. Even if administrators and policymakers had the will and the way to increase the doctor supply, they may be feeding a system that ultimately can’t be sustained. “Any debate over the size of the physician workforce is a distraction from the major work we need to do to address more important issues of quality and efficiency,” says David Goodman, a pediatrician and professor at Dartmouth Medical School.