Report: Greensboro, Raleigh Short on Doctors

A new report says Greensboro is facing a doctor shortage. BetterDoctor.com ranks the city number five in its list of the top 25 cities that doesn't have enough primary care physicians. Raleigh also made the list at number six.

The report uses U.S. Census Data. Greensboro has 418 residents per doctor. Charlotte, on the other hand, has just 161 people per doctor.

Erin Fraher is an Assistant Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine. She's also head of the development team at the Sheps Center's Program on Workforce Research and Policy at the University.

She says overall, North Carolina has enough physicians in the workforce, but they're not equally distributed. “We need to be thinking not just in terms of the overall number of physicians, but I think we need to be thinking more specifically about whether we have physicians who are in the right places. Our issue in North Carolina is that we have rural communities and we have patients who are not getting the care that they need, and so that is more of my concern."

Fraher says of the medical students who graduate from North Carolina medical schools, only about 2 percent end up in practice in primary care in the state.

Demand for doctors is up, too. The boomer generation is aging and more people are entering the health care system through the Affordable Care Act.  Also, more primary care physicians are specializing.

Fraher says a possible solution is to keep more doctors in the state by offering medical students residencies in North Carolina. “So the big issue is that you can expand medical school enrollments all that you want, but unless you actually put those medical students into NC residencies and give them incentives to practice in rural areas, your chance of retaining them in the workforce here is much lower."

She says some of the projected shortage areas include general family practitioners, internists, pediatricians and circulatory physicians.

The place with the best doctor to patient ratio is Greenville, South Carolina with 44 residents per doctor.