The Desertification of U.S. Healthcare | Asembia 2024

In an interview with Managed Healthcare Executive prior to his Asembia 24 presentation tiled "2024 State of the Payer: Payers, Patients, Policy and Pressure," Greenwalt discussed how physician shortages and retail pharmacy closures are affecting access to healthcare in the U.S. Greenwalt said that over the next decade, there will be a shortage of between 130,000 and150,000 physicians out of a million practicing physicians, which Greenwalt said works out to a full 10%.

"There are not enough physicians to see an aging population," he said, Greenwalt also pointed to retail pharmacy closures as creating gaps in access. In the past six years, 10,000 retail pharmacies have closed, he said.

Cracks in the healthcare system are occurring, Greenwalt said.

"Unfortunately," he continued, "where a lot of those cracks sit is where society can least afford to have them sit — it is in rural America and it is in inner cities.

So it creates a healthcare desert for accessing care for many Americans, and it is very challenging."

Nurse practitioners, physician assistants and urgent care centers are filling some of these gaps, Greenwalt said; the number of urgent care centers is supposed to double by the end of the decade.

Greenwalt noted that "patient journeys" may change if they access healthcare through the services provided by urgent care centers or mid-level providers such as a nurse practitioners.

"If you are going to a nurse practitioner or physican assistant and they are working you up, is that the same as a physician would do?"