Jerry Gurwitz was one of the first doctors to receive the designation as a geriatrician. He’s now the chief of geriatric medicine at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. Recently, he told KFF about how geriatric medicine, in terms of numbers not care, is declining even though the amount of older Americans is on the rise.
The numbers about older adults and medical care show that the specialty is dwindling. Between 2000 and today, the number of people over 65 has increased more than 60%. Now, there are about 7,400 geriatricians compared to 10,270 geriatricians back in 2000. Currently, the ratio of providers to older adults is 1 to 10,000.
The number of doctors coming into the field isn’t increasing, which complicates things. Medical schools don’t have to teach students about geriatrics; fewer than half require students to have any field-specific skills or clinical experiences.
Gurwitz and other doctors said that doctors tend to avoid the geriatric speciality due to low Medicare reimbursement for services, the perception of older people as unappealing and low earnings compared with other medical fields.
“There’s still tremendous ageism in the health care system and society,” Gregg Warshaw, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, told KFF.
Geriatricians have pioneered plenty of advancements for personalized care for older adults. In addition to pushing for individualized care and integrating social interactions into a larger picture of well-being, geriatric doctors have led the hospital-at-home initiative, emergency departments for older adults, age-friendly health systems, and surgery standards specifically for older people.
“What we’re really trying to do is broaden the tent and train a health care workforce where everybody has some degree of geriatrics expertise,” Michael Harper, board chair of the American Geriatrics Society and a professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, told KFF.
