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Marc Giauque ReportingSome say there are already symptoms. Long waits in the ER, longer waits for a simple doctor's appointment. It's part of what some are calling a shortage of new doctors that really could hit hard in the next decade.
Jared Tyler is about to begin his second year of medical school.
"It's worth it for me. Yeah I've heard, I've talked to a couple of brothers that have gone into business just because they've heard from my uncle and my father that it's just not worth it any more."
He's not sure yet about his specialty, but he expects at least in the early years, he'll keep very long hours.
"Ya know, I think in this young ambitious stage, I would like to busy and I hope to have lots of patients."
Experts say he'll definitely have them. After years of predicting a glut of doctors, because of changes in technology, even HMO's, many now say there will be far too few to meet our needs in a decade.
"In fact I think we are starting to see that now. Where if you call up for an appointment for certain specialist you have to wait a long time."
Dr. David Bjorkman, Dean of the Medical School at the University of Utah says it isn't because of a lack of people who want to be docs.
"At the University of Utah we have twelve times as many applicants as we have spaces."
The problem, he says, is paying for those spaces.
"We now have a task force which is looking at whether or not we can expand our medical school."
Another problem, Bjorkman says, finding physicians willing to work the long hours, for relatively low pay associated with some specialties.
"Are students have career aspirations that take into account the kind of lifestyle that they want, which makes it even more difficult for us to recruit into certain specialties and to find physicians willing to work in rural areas."
Bjorkman says some feel forced into some areas, just to justify the huge debts they build up during training. He says Utah has another problem-- growth from within and without.
Bjorkman says that, in part, means recruiting doctors from other areas of the country, hoping to beat out the competition by other states.
