Primary care mistreated

As a retired internist, I can tell you the shortage of primary care doctors will get worse before it gets better. Organized medicine and the government have given lip service to the idea of raising compensation to be commensurate with education and effort for primary care going back over 40 years.

The gross disparity in pay for cognitive (most of primary care) versus procedural medicine remains an embarrassment and a roadblock to correcting primary care shortages. With 50 percent of today’s graduating doctors being women who realize there are more responsibilities to life than work, quality-of-life issues become more important in choosing which field of medicine to enter.

Historically, primary care with heavy after-hours call demands has paid a fraction of what procedure-based fields like dermatology, ophthalmology and endoscopic gastroenterology have paid.

Why should medical students pick primary care when they are emerging from training with education debt loads of $200,000 or more?

Ward Buckingham, M.D.

Spokane