etor income), and creates 21 jobs in the Hemp- hill County economy.6
Crucial for economic development
A healthy and viable medical system is vital for continued economic development in our state. Without a healthy and educated workforce or ready access to high-quality medical care, Texas cannot attract new industries and employers.
Economic development experts from coast to coast cite health care as a critical factor companies evaluate as they determine where to locate.
“Larger employers are looking at everything before moving,” said Martin Moll, partner and chair of the health care practice at AKT, a CPA and business consultant firm in Portland, Ore. “If a city has long emergency department waits or it is impossible to get access to a primary care physician, the employer will look at another city.”8
As Ricardo Azziz, MD, president of Georgia Health Sciences University and CEO of Georgia Health Sciences Health System, said in an interview with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, “When an industry is deciding to ‘set up shop,’ if you would, in our communities, first thing they will look for is, ‘Is there adequate health care that is affordable, that is readily available, that actually meets the needs of that particular industry?’ ”9
Although health care is big business, individual physician practices are small businesses — mostly very small and often struggling. About 34 percent of Texas physicians are solo practitioners; another 38 percent are in small groups of two to six physicians. These small practices each employ four to five additional workers per physician and have large overhead expenses. Two-thirds of Texas physicians report having trouble covering payroll and other practice expenses because of difficulties in collecting timely or adequate payment from insurers and government payers.
SECTION 1 Ensure an Adequate Health Care Workforce
Texas has a large, growing population that is growing sicker and needs more and better- coordinated health care services. Unfortunately, Texas — even more than most of the rest of the country — needs more physicians and other health care professionals. Although our 2003 liability reforms have brought an influx of new physicians, the current supply won’t be able to keep up with the demand, especially if the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) withstands constitutional scrutiny. We need more physicians and other health care professionals working in all parts of the state, especially in rural and border Texas. We need to invest more in our medical schools and graduate medical education training programs. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that allied health professionals — who haven’t gone to medical school — can fill the gap
56 TEXAS MEDICINE July 2012
as independent practitioners. Instead, we need to work on building physician-led health care teams that can safely meet the diverse needs of the Texas population.
Meet the growing demand for medically necessary care with clinically appropriate medical services
Texas’ population is expected to boom from 25 million to almost 45 million by 2040. These numbers include not just a larger population, but also a larger need for more health care services from a growing populace of increasingly obese Texans and the generally sicker elderly residents.10
Texas has long been challenged to produce or recruit enough physicians to keep up with our
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