ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - The state of Missouri has a shortage of physicians, with the state estimated to be short of around 1,000 positions.
At least of them are 599 primary doctors and 159 of them are psychiatrists.
"The shortage is statewide, in fact almost every single county in the state of Missouri is classified as a health professional shortage area," said Dr. Heidi Miller, Chief Medical Officer for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services on The Chris and Amy Show. "But our rural counties are the most vulnerable to this shortage."
To become a doctor, you need to not only go to four years of medical school, and also then attend a mandatory residency program that take at least three years.
According to Miller, while the state does have seven medical schools and is in the top ten of producing medical school residents, only a little over half of the graduates are able to find residency positions in the state.
A cause of that, according to Miller, is due to a federal limit and lack of funding on those residency programs that limits how many residential positions each hospital can have.
"We are basically graduating about 1,000 Medical students a year and we only have about 700 residency positions," said Miller. "So we are literally exporting our own Medical school graduates to do their residency training in other states."
That is the state of Missouri is allocating more than $2 million in state funds to create physicians-in-training positions at hospitals in both St. Louis and Columbia.
"The state of Missouri has started to generate and support more residency training opportunities so that physicians can learn how to be doctors and can stay in Missouri and take care of Missourians," said Miller.
Miller says that the funds by the state will help keep physicians in the state as there is past evidence that shows physicians tend to stay in the state where they were trained.
"If you go to medical school in Missouri and have residency in Missouri, there is at least a 56% chance they stay in the state and deliver care here in their career," said Miller.