Cancer care demand to outpace oncologist supply

Physician leaders said primary care doctors and nurse practitioners will be tapped to help fill the void an oncologist shortage creates.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. April 2, 2007.

By 2020, there won't be enough oncologists to care for a graying nation.

As the U.S. population ages, it also is growing. And the number of cancer survivors is increasing. A new study predicts that the supply of oncologists will not keep up with the changes, resulting in a shortage of 2,550 to 4,080 oncologists in 13 years.

Having primary care physicians play a bigger role in monitoring patients in remission could help lessen the burden, researchers said. But that may be asking a lot, considering a waning interest in primary care and fears of shortages in that specialty as well. Fewer U.S. medical graduates are choosing family medicine and internal medicine, despite a growing demand for such doctors.

"The pressure on [primary care physicians] to see more patients will be high. The problem is, they won't be able to handle it because of the sheer numbers" of patients, said Albert B. Einstein Jr., MD, executive director of the Swedish Cancer Institute at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle.

The study in the March Journal of Oncology Practice is the latest prediction of a physician shortage. A 2006 study showed a national shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists, and several specialty groups said they expect a shortage among some specialties, including cardiologists, critical care physicians and geriatricians.

Pointing to an aging work force and a growing population, the Assn. of American Medical Colleges last year said U.S. allopathic medical schools should increase enrollment by 30% by 2015. "There's a shortage of other specialists, not just oncologists. It's going to get worse, because we're not training enough doctors," said Richard A. Cooper, MD, senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.