COVID-19: A Way for the States to Increase the Number of Available Physicians

Abstract

Each level of government has its own peculiar responsibilities to address the COVID-19 pandemic. The states are responsible for licensing physicians who can treat the affected people. Each year, a large number of American and foreign medical school graduates do not find a residency position in the United States. Medical school graduates who have passed the qualifying examination have acquired a considerable amount of education and training during their medical studies, far more than physician assistants, nurses, military corpsmen and medics, and civilian paramedics or emergency medical technicians. They comprise a pool of talent that could be immensely useful in ameliorating the shortage of physician care throughout the country during the pandemic. State lawmakers should allow those graduates to receive a provisional license so that they can provide emergency medical care under the supervision of a licensed physician to help treat the ever-increasing number of COVID-19 patients we will see throughout the near future, or those patients who suffer from more common illnesses and injuries.

Keywords: COVID-19, physician licensing, provisional physician licensing