The need for doctors across Florida is growing along with the state’s population.
One sign of the growing need: Sarasota Memorial Hospital recently opened a new, expanded emergency department in Venice.
By 2035, Florida could be short of 18,000 physicians. And it’s not just doctors: The state is also facing a shortage of nearly 60,000 nurses.
Acadia Jacob, advocacy director at Florida Voices for Health and Jeff Johnson, state director for AARP Florida, joined "Florida Matters" to talk about who’s affected by the shortage of medical professionals. You’ll also hear about efforts to train a new generation of doctors from Dr. Gaelle Laurore-Fray, executive vice president of Medicine & Medical Education with Tampa Family Health Centers.
“We travel all around the state, and I think both folks in metropolitan areas as well as our neighbors in rural counties are really struggling. In particular, our rural counties have been so hard hit by recent hospital closures,” Jacob said.
Jacob added that coverage is an added barrier to care for many Floridians.
“Florida is one of the last 10 states that hasn’t yet expanded the Medicaid program, so what that means is there’s a lot more folks who are caught in our health care coverage gap, who just don’t have health care coverage to begin with.”
Johnson said people across the income spectrum are worried about having access to care.
“There is a concern about the potential shortage and the actual shortage of physicians. Some of it in the Southwest Coast particularly was exacerbated by Hurricane Ian – if you can remember that far back – and so I would expect that has continued to be the case here,” Johnson said.
“A lot of this is generational, where the physicians and nurses and other health care providers are reaching retirement age themselves, and the state’s economy has not been geared to really attract the next generation of health care providers, leaving us caught short."
Health care providers across the greater Tampa Bay region are training more doctors to meet the need. BayCare, the nonprofit system with hospitals in Hillsborough, Pasco, Polk and Pinellas counties, plans to add 650 residents by 2029.
Some of those residents are getting training in family practice at Tampa Family Health Centers. TFHC also provides services like pediatrics, OB-GYN and dentistry for patients with and without insurance at clinics throughout Hillsborough County.
The shortage of health care professionals has particularly affected primary care, said Laurore-Fray.
Partnering with Bayare on the residency program meant “six new physicians who are out there and are passionate about community health, passionate about taking care of our patients. And it also meant that our patients could get in to see our physicians much faster than they normally would,” Laurore-Fray said.
“When we recruited this group of residents, we particularly were looking for residents who had interest in staying within the community,” Laurore-Fray said.
The residency program is “definitely a light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to addressing the physician shortage here in Tampa Bay,” she said.
