BOISE, Idaho — Idaho is facing a continuing shortage of doctors. I’m senior reporter Roland Beres for Wellness Wednesday, where we’re healthier together, and solutions are hard to come by in a state where doctors in certain fields are leaving or in high demand.
In fact, Idaho’s doctor shortage has reached a low point.
“We know it’s particularly challenging — worst in the nation actually — in terms of haveing the fewest primary care physicians per 100,000 residents. We are last in the country,” said Dr. Daniel Meltzer.
We struggle even more with mental health doctors, like psychiatrists, and we struggle with keeping women’s health providers who are leaving the state following abortion bans.
Two bright spots are the ICOM Medical College in Meridian and WWAMI in northern Idaho, which is a medical school cooperative between Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho.
“One of the nice things about WWAMI up in Moscow is they’ve doubled the number of students in their class over the past few years. And it’s the only state-funded public medical school and those who go through WWAMI are committed to coming back to Idaho after their residency,” said Dr. Meltzer.
And that’s the key — to get doctors to stay in rural Idaho, despite huge loan bills. And even if doctors want to stay, sometimes the resources just don’t exist.
"It’s not just physicians. Once you have a physician, you need a nurse, you need a medical assistant, you need front office staff, you need technical staff to help, so we struggle with physicians but we struggle with the whole infrastructure that supports physicians across the state,” said Dr. Meltzer.
Dr. Meltzer says the state legislature will need to be involved to help fix the problem.
