Despite Aging U.S. Population, Few Physicians Specialize in Treatment for the Elderly

Even as the "population ages and more people ... need them ... geriatricians are in short supply," according to reports. Geriatrics "is a specialty of little interest to medical students because geriatricians are paid relatively poorly and are not considered superstars in an era of high-tech medicine." There was one geriatrician for every 5,000 U.S. residents older than age 65 in 2005, and of 145 medical schools nationwide, only nine have geriatric departments. In addition, "teaching hospitals graduate internists with as little as six hours of geriatric training," the report said. Geriatrics is a specialty "about managing, not curing, a collection of chronic conditions"; "balancing the risks and benefits of multiple medications"; and trying "nonmedical solutions." Such "common-sense remedies" exist in a health system that "rewards the heroics of specialists in both compensation and prestige,” and further noted that the "best paid doctors are those who do the most procedures." Radiologists and orthopedic surgeons, for instance, have average annual incomes of $400,000, compared with $150,000 for geriatricians. One solution, gaining a foothold among the nation's top academic geriatricians is to teach the primary principles of the specialty to all doctors "because it is unrealistic to assume there will be enough geriatricians to go around." Leo Cooney, a professor at Yale University School of Medicine said, "If we got to the point where everybody in the health care system was an expert in caring for older people, we wouldn't need geriatricians. Or we wouldn't need them as frontline providers. We'd be like consultants, making sure everyone else was as skilled as possible."