"Physician shortages become a compounding problem because they drive physician burnout and turnover, leading to even worse shortages," Decker said. "At some point, you can stretch physicians and other providers only so far."

However, even with a shortage of physicians, 72% of respondents said new patients were not being turned away.

"Healthcare organizations can usually accommodate patients; the question is when," Decker said. "AMN Healthcare survey data show that physician appointment wait times have increased by 48% since 2004. At some point, patients either seek care at a competitor or defer care altogether, which undermines both quality of care and facility revenue."

"Facilities can fill gaps using locum tenens physicians, though in the long term we need to train more physicians and more efficiently utilize the ones we have," he added.

How employers are trying to recruit applicants

According to the respondents, some of the strategies employers are using to attract more qualified physician applicants include networking, improving compensation, and using a recruitment firm. 

"Primary care physicians are gatekeepers to the system and 'feed' specialists, so there is a strong need for their services," Decker said. "However, in our experience, both primary care physicians and specialists are in short supply."

Some respondents also expressed concerns about the availability of qualified physician candidates in the future.

"After interviewing recent graduate physicians, I am concerned with the quantity and quality of the workforce," one respondent said.

"Applications for medical school have not increased sufficiently to fulfill the anticipated needs of the future," another respondent said. "Additionally, residency graduates entering the physician workforce have a more work-life balance approach, which may be wise but nonetheless contribute to a lack of practicing physicians in the future."

The solution isn't more doctors. It's more efficiency.

By Sebastian Beckmann and Daniel Kuzmanovich

There are some specific specialties and geographic areas with a physician shortage. For example, neurosurgeon supply almost singlehandedly drives neurosurgery volumes and many rural markets lack any primary care coverage.

But in some instances, we question whether we have a physician shortage for a very specific reason: We don't currently practice in the most efficient way possible.

In other words, we don't have a nationwide physician shortage. We have an efficiency problem.

More broadly, we should be thinking about physician time. Physicians spend outsized time on administrative tasks which limits their ability to treat patients.

For instance, our recent physician research found that each physician spends about six hours and nine minutes (369 minutes) per day on three tasks alone: documentation, prior authorization, and inbox messaging.

However, with appropriate workflow interventions in each of those three categories, that time could be drastically reduced by about 3 hours. These three actionable insights detail the custom workflow solutions that save providers time.

So, while it's true there is a physician shortage in some markets or specialties, it's also true that a lot of administrative burden and inefficiency in our current care model is reducing physicians' availability. 

If we reduce administrative burden on physician time and triage patients to the right provider at scale, we could obviate the shortage.