Dear Representative Castor:
As the Alliance of Specialty Medicine (Alliance), our mission is to advocate for sound federal health care policy
that fosters patient access to the highest quality specialty care. As patient and physician advocates, the Alliance
writes in support of your legislation, H.R. 4774, the “Training Tomorrow’s Doctors Today Act,” which would
increase the number of Graduate Medical Education (GME) residency positions by 15,000 over the next 5 years in
order to tackle the severe physician manpower shortage.
While the Alliance acknowledges the need to increase the number of available primary care providers, this only
addresses part of the problem. The United States will face an overall shortage of more than 130,000 physicians by 2025.One-half of this shortage, however, will come from specialty physicians, including neurosurgeons,
urologists, cardiologists, gastroenterologists and orthopaedic surgeons. Given the increased demand created for
their services by an aging population and expanded insurance coverage, we need to take steps now to ensure a
fully trained specialty physician workforce for the future. We are in agreement that this legislation will begin to
help improve the acute shortage of specialty physicians.
The Alliance recognizes that both primary care providers and specialists are an integral part of American medicine.
We support the report included as part of your legislation that would study the needs of the US healthcare system
and allocate residencies accordingly.
Your legislation would improve the nation’s graduate medical education system and help to preserve access to
essential health services for many Americans. For these reasons, the Alliance extends our strong support.
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