Physician labour supply in Canada: a cohort analysis

Abstract

Abstract:This paper employs cohort analysis to examine the relative importance of different factors in explaining changes in the number of hours spent in direct patient care by Canadian general/ family practitioners (GP/FPs) over the period 1982 to 2002. Cohorts are defined by year of graduation from medical school. The results for male GP/FPs indicate that: there is little age effect on hours of direct patient care, especially among physicians aged 35 to 55; there is no strong cohort effect on hours of direct patient care; but there is a secular decline in hours of direct patient care over the period. The results for female GP/FPs indicate that: female physicians on average work fewer hours than male physicians; there is a clear age effect on hours of direct patient care; there is no strong cohort effect; there has been little secular change in average hours of direct patient care. The changing behaviour of male GP/FPs accounted for a greater proportion of the overall decline in hours of direct patient care from the 80's through the mid 90's than did the growing proportion of female GP/FPs in the physician stock.

Two Wings and a Prayer: Should Canada Make It Easier for Canadian Doctors Trained Abroad to Enter Practice Here?

“…First-year entrants to medical schools in Canada are now about 56% female, and have been since 1999 (Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada 2013c). But the more important trend here is a secular decline in physicians' hours of direct patient care over time (Crossley et al 2009), which would seem to reinforce the claim that more physicians are needed. The inconvenient truth, however, is that even as hours of work are falling, (fee-adjusted) billings per doctor are increasing (McGrail et al).…”

“…First, the emergence of un-or underemployed physicians appears, at this point, to be clustering in specialties such as surgery that require public investment in complementary capacity (staffed and funded operating suites) (Branswell 2013;Dempsey 2012). Second, the increasing feminization of the physician workforce means less effective physician supply because of fewer hours of work per physician (Crossley et al 2009;Watson et al 2006). Third, an aging population will need more doctors -and the population is certainly aging.…”

The aging male population and medical care for benign prostatic hyperplasia in Canada

“…Moreover, young physicians tend to seek greater balance between professional and non-professional activities, which implies working less hours than physicians have in the past. 8 Simply maintaining the present number of urologists to 2018 may be difficult, but no increase would mean that there would be a deficit of nearly 220 (almost 30%) below the number needed to maintain the 2005 estimated number of men aged 50 and older with msLUTS per urologist. While the number of Canadian urologists was relatively stable between 1999 and 2007, the number of family physicians increased by 13%.…”

Challenges and strategies for determining workforce requirements in plastic surgery

“…If the base year is assumed to have been in shortage, as currently estimated, then future requirements need to be adjusted upward. Similarly, if physicians work fewer hours in the future (a trend observed in recent decades), then the growth rate for the demand of additional surgeons may need to be adjusted upward by as much as 1% every four or five years (19).…”