take Step 3 and get licensed to practice in Texas within the seven-year time limit. It also means Texas could lose those and other similarly situated physicians to other states in the meantime. “If there are exceptions where you can’t come back to practice in Texas until you’re li- censed somewhere else for at least five years, what happens? They never come back,” he said. Dr. Cable says that the Council on Medical Education is working carefully to determine whether the tide is indeed changing. “We know that taking a multiple- choice test is imperfect and doesn’t cor- relate well with who is a good doctor. And we don’t want anyone banished from practicing in Texas. But what I don’t think we should do is introduce a bill every session to address a particular doctor, in a particular location, in a par- ticular scenario,” Dr. Cable said. “With all those caveats, we are trying to come up with a reasonable standard that says we are confident physicians in Texas are well-trained.”
taining physicians from medical school and fifth place in retention from residen- cy training. When retention from under- graduate medical education (UME) and GME are combined, Texas ranks third. Among the top six most-populous states, Texas ranks fourth for ratios of medical students and residents per 100,000 population, edging ahead of Florida and California but falling behind Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois. For physician-to-population ratios, however,
Texas continues to rank last among the most populous states and toward the bottom nationally. The state’s ratios of patient care physicians and primary care physicians per capita have steadily in- creased for some time, but not at a level that allowed Texas to rise in the rank- ings among the most populous states. n
Amy Lynn Sorrel is the associate editor of Texas Medi- cine. You can reach her by telephone at (800) 880-1300, ext. 1392, or (512) 370-1392; by fax at (512) 370-1629; or by email at
amy.sorrel@
texmed.org.
Physician retention From medical
school
California: 62.4% Texas: 59.4%
Texas medical school graduates, residents stay in Texas
Not only is Texas attracting record-high numbers of new physicians to the state each year, but also medical school grad- uates and residents who train here stay here, a new report shows. That’s why the Texas Medical Association continues to advocate that the state invest in medi- cal schools and graduate medical educa- tion (GME) programs to make sure Texas has enough physicians. Texas continues to rank among the leading states in physician retention from medical school and residency, ac- cording to new statistics reported in the Association of American Medical Colleg- es (AAMC) 2013 State Physician Work- force Data Book (
http://bit.ly/19tqboS), which is based on 2012 data. California topped the list with 62 percent. Texas took second place at 59 percent in re-
Arkansas: 58.4% Mississippi: 54.4% Hawaii: 52.8%
From GME programs
Combined UME/ GME
California: 69.5% Hawaii: 85.8% Alaska: 67.8% Montana: 63.3% Florida: 58.7% Texas: 57.9%
44.9% 68.1%
Arkansas: 80.6% Texas: 80.4%
California: 80.1% Nevada: 79.1%
National median: National median: National median: 38.7%
Texas’ physician workforce Per 100,000
population
Medical students Medical residents Active patient care physicians
Rank among all 50 states
29th 23rd 41st
Active primary care 47th
4th 4th 6th
6th
physicians *California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas
February 2014 TEXAS MEDICINE 31
Rank among 6
most populous states*
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