Doctor, Nurse Vacancies Rise Due to Obamacare

State hospitals and medical facilities will be flooded with millions of patients insured under Obamacare. Medical care is now affordable and there is a 20% shortage of doctors and nurses due to this influx. AMN healthcare conducted a survey which shows that the vacancy for doctors and nurses has increased 3 times to what it was 4 years ago. “There is a war for talent,” Sean Gregory, president of Health First Holmes Regional Medical Center, a 400-bed hospital in Melbourne, Florida, said in an interview with Forbes.

The employment scene shows up as the Affordable Care Act and pressures by insurance companies and employers to control costs creates a shift away from fee-for-service payment of doctors to approaches that emphasize more accountable care.

Under the new models, primary care doctors are reserved for care – only after nurse practitioners and physician assistants see the patients and ensure that they are taking their medications and following doctor’s orders.

Nurse practitioners and physician assistants are also in short supply with hospital executives seeing a vacancy rate of 15 per cent, according to the AMN Healthcare survey.

“We are actively hiring and building up cores of physician assistants and nurse practitioners,” Gregory said.

Accountable care programs are here to stay and the insurer contacts medical care providers who are tied up with patient centered medical homes where the physicians encourage patients to get medical care from clinics and the doctor’s office because costs are lower than those of hospitals, especially emergency rooms.

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Accountable care organizations are linked with health plans and to make them work better - many new nurse practitioners are being hired by hospitals. Several insurance companies like Aetna, Cigna, United Health Group and Blue Cross are linking health plans with accountable care organizations and patient centered medical homes.

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Hannah Punitha (IRDA Licence Number: 2710062)

World News, December 2013

Source-Medindia