Abstract for: Enhancing Health Workforce Planning: Insights from Modeling Specialization, Retirement, Task Shifting, and Population Health

Medical societies, patient advocates, and policymakers have been sounding alarm bells for decades that the supply of physicians is far too limited to meet Americans’ medical needs. Stakeholders of the U.S. health system have attempted to compensate for this shortage in various ways, yet shortfalls remain. Gaining a better understanding of physician workforce dynamics could help stakeholders identify and assess the effectiveness of policies to address workforce imbalances. Researchers at <> and <> have partnered to use system dynamics modeling for this purpose. This paper describes four key aspects of the collaborative’s model formulation: the physician specialization process and its impact on imbalances of supply, demand, perceived need, and clinical need for primary and specialty care; phases in physician careers and retirement; enriching the representation of Advanced Practice Practitioners (Physician Assistants (PA) and Nurse Practitioners (NPs)) and of their role in tasks shifting; and modeling the effects of imbalances on utilization and population health. Policy analysis results will be available in time for the conference.