Manpower for Health Care.

The document is a collection of six papers on key problems in health manpower which were presented at a symposium during the 1974 spring meeting of the Institute of Medicine. A seventh paper provides a summary of the major themes at the conclusion of the program. All of the symposium papers deal with the principal manpower issues of supply, distribution of physicians by geography and specialty, and the role of non-physicians in the delivery of health care. Although the speakers differ on the relative importance of these problems and remedies for them, there is general agreement on certain basic propositions: (1) there is a maldistribution of physicians by geographic location and specialty; (2) there is a need for more physicians to enter the primary care specialites; (3) greater use of physician-extenders could improve physician productivity in the delivery of health care; (4) there is little real prospect for solving distribution problems through voluntary actions taken by physicians, medical schools, or teaching hospitals; (5) simply increasing the supply of physicians will not solve distribution problems. (Author/AJ)