Cardiologists pump up efforts to avert shortage

One proposal could mean that internal medicine programs would lose some third-year residents who provide a bulk of patient care.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. Jan. 24, 2005.

The schedule at the office of cardiologist John Hayes, MD, is jam-packed. His staff at Wisconsin's Marshfield Clinic double-books his schedule and squeezes in patients at the end of the day just to keep up with demand.

All 22 cardiologists who work at Dr. Hayes' multisite clinic face the same pressures.

"People are pretty much maxed out. There's only so much you can do in a day," said Dr. Hayes, who is chair of the clinic's cardiology department. "You want to make sure people don't have to wait too long, particularly since many things we do are urgent."

Dr. Hayes is looking to hire five more cardiologists now and three more over the next three years in anticipation of population growth in the region as well as an increase in the number of older patients and the number of patients with obesity-related heart disease -- two factors not unique to Wisconsin.

"When you talk to colleagues in other parts of the state or the country, everyone has the same pressures of trying to fill positions," Dr. Hayes said. "It's an ongoing stress to say the least. You feel you could accomplish so much if you had the critical number of people to do it."

While there are anecdotal reports of regional shortages, a study that appeared in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in 2000 estimated that this cardiology shortage would become widespread during the 2010s and 2020s as heart disease strikes the aging baby boom generation at the same time baby boomer cardiologists are retiring.