by Roby Brock (roby@talkbusiness.net)

State Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, wants a stronger state focus on a physician shortage issue that she says threatens the health of rural Arkansans.

Irvin, who chairs the Senate Public Health Committee, appeared on this week’s Capitol View program and stressed that the medical worker shortage is a major workforce issue.

“I’m calling on the Secretary of Commerce to really put this at the top priority of his list. This is a workforce development issue and we’ve got to have more residencies in the state of Arkansas,” she said.

A report from the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement released this week shows that Arkansas does not have enough medical residencies for graduates to move into, which creates a net exodus of potential doctors from the state.

Senate Public Health Chair wants more focus on physician shortage

by Talk Business & Politics staff (staff2@talkbusiness.net)

Arkansas needs more doctors, but there haven’t been enough residency positions for new medical school graduates in the past three years, a study by the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement found.

The ACHI study released Wednesday (Dec. 13) found the gap hit its high point in 2021 when there were only 309 residency positions for 431 graduates. The gap has narrowed somewhat since then. In 2022, there were 408 graduates, but only 341 residency positions were available. In 2023, there were 356 residency positions for 401 graduates.

The four prior years, there were more residency positions than graduates. In 2020, there were 264 graduates and 289 residency positions available for them. There were 163 graduates and 280 residency positions in 2019. In the prior two years, there were 159 graduates and 223 residency positions in 2018, and 160 graduates and 210 residency positions in 2017.

ACHI report says not enough residencies for med school grads