By Chas Roades, Chief Research Officer, The Advisory Board Company
FALL 2014 – For many organizations, physician strategy has been driven by fear of a looming physician shortage. Hospitals have focused on amassing more physicians than competitors, fueling a huge increase in hospital-physician partnership activity.
But shortage projections are based on outdated estimates of physician supply and demand. New care models and technologies are improving physician efficiency and increasing effective supply, while population health efforts and the retail insurance environment are reducing demand.
We modeled the future of physician demand and supply, examining a market with 100,000 patients and applying different care management scenarios. Under a move to either moderate or aggressive degrees of care management, physician demand drops dramatically.
And this isn’t just an academic exercise. Organizations with experience in population health management are already experiencing declines in physician demand, especially for certain specialists.
