At a time when baby boomers are reaching retirement age, Connecticut is struggling to cope with a large impending drop in physician numbers. This is due to two reasons: the aging
of the physician population and an inability to recruit younger physicians to this state. Connecticut ranks in the top 5 states in percentage of physicians over the age of 55 and 40th in those under age 40. 

The Connecticut Workforce survey 2008, a survey of over a 1000 physicians practicing in the state of Connecticut gave us a lot of useful information in this regard. Over a third of the physicians (36%) in the state are between the ages of 55 and 64. This percentage of older physicians is the fourth largest in the country. Their retirement is likely to exacerbate the shortage of physicians caring for an older population.  

Compounding this issue is an inability to recruit young physicians to replace them. Only 16% of the physicians in the state are under the age of 44. Most medical practices report difficulty in recruiting and retaining physicians to the state of Connecticut. It takes an average of more than two years to recruit certain specialties. This is despite Connecticut’s status as one of the wealthiest states in the country. 

Reasons for this difficulty in recruitment include a low number of graduating medical students entering primary care as a career, a high level of student debt, lack of affordable liability insurance and an uncoordinated system of night/weekend
call coverage with each hospital organized and staffed independently. 

Beyond numbers of physicians, the failure of Medicare reimbursement to keep up with increasing costs of practice have caused some doctors to stop taking new Medicare patients, creating increasing workloads for those who do. Taking medical inflation into account, Medicare reimbursement has dropped by 40% since 1990. 

This drop in physician availability has led to increased wait times to see doctors, increased difficulty obtaining referrals from specialties and longer hours of practice for many physicians. 

Here is a link to the survey mentioned above: 

1. Aseltine RH, Katz MC, Geragosian AH: Connecticut Physician Workforce Survey 2008.