The endless health care debate

As 2009 comes to and end, I often wonder what types of health care changes we will see in 2010. Will the health care debate continue? Will we see the beginnings of some type of universal health care coverage in the United States (AKA, public option)?

Will doctors embrace health IT and switch from paper records to electronic health records (EHRs) in 2010? Or will most wait until 2011 and try to delay that transition? (If they delay, they'll simply miss out on the benefits, so why delay?)

I personally think we'll see some significant changes occur in 2010. More physicians will probably decide to drop Medicare and Medicaid patients. More physicians will transition to cash-only practices. More physicians will look for non-clinical careers (see http://www.nonclinicaljobs.com/). And, more physicians will simply retire.

So, as more people get access to health care resources, there will be fewer physicians to care for them. Is there a national physician shortage? Some may argue that it's really a regional shortage of primary care physicians, but I think we'll see a real shortage as more people get health insurance and schedule appointments.

Is there a growing interest in non-clinical careers among physicians

In my other blog (http://www.nonclinicaljobs.com), I write exclusively about non-clinical career opportunities for physicians and other healthcare professionals. Recently, I have noticed a significant increase in traffic to http://www.nonclinicaljobs.com directed from Internet search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. People are typing "non clinical physician jobs" into search engines and they are ending up on my site. This trend makes me wonder: are more physicians searching for non-clinical jobs these days? Are all these debates and discussions regarding health care reform causing physicians to re-consider their "calling" into medicine? Perhaps they wish to stay connected with the science of medicine but maybe they wish to get out of direct patient care. Maybe physicians are exploring their options and developing contingency plans. After all, they may not wish to practice medicine in the setting of reformed health care (although some are reforming their own practice by converting to concierge medicine - which is also often called boutique medicine).

Our nation already faces a shortage of physicians (some may argue this point), but there's no doubt that certain areas of this country have a significant lack of healthcare providers. What will happen if more physicians decide to leave clinical medicine to pursue non-clinical careers?