
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 20, 1994                   TAG: 9407200088
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BALTIMORE                                 LENGTH: Short

STUDY PREDICTS SURFEIT OF DOCTORS

Forty percent of all medical specialists in the United States could be unnecessary by the end of the decade, whether the government enacts health-care reform or not, researchers have reported.

With the nation moving toward more managed-care networks built around primary care doctors, there will be a surplus of as many as 165,000 doctors by the year 2000, according to a Johns Hopkins School of Public Health study.

Of those, 151,000 will be specialists. The country will need only 225,000 specialists but will have 376,000, according to the study, to be published in today's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

By the end of the century, there will be 550,000 doctors, it said.

The study underscores the need to push medical students into such areas as family and community medicine rather than the more prestigious and lucrative specialties, said the study's author, Jonathan Weiner, associate professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins.

Medical schools should ``train future generations of physicians to meet society's needs,'' he said.

by CNB