In my last blog I talked about the worsening doctor shortage in the U.S. (Doctor Shortage Worsening) The reasons for this shortage are many and include early retirement of current physicians, unqualified medical school applicants, insufficient training facilities, inadequate medical school capacities, a growing population, declining interest in the medical profession, and many others.

In the last blog, we talked about expanding the number of available spots in medical schools and in residency training programs. These solutions will take lots of money and time to build the facilities needed and support the increased faculty needed. Some have suggested a faster solution is increasing the number of foreign-trained physicians.

Jonathan Wolfson, writing in The Wall Street Journal, says some states are looking to solve the problem by lowering the requirements for foreign-trained physicians to become licensed in this country. Historically, foreign-trained physicians have been required to repeat their residency training in U.S. residency programs in order to be licensed to practice in this country.

This meant top foreign doctors who treat professional athletes around the world, for example, could treat American athletes only overseas. Or doctors who wanted to help underserved communities in the U.S. would have to take lower pay and repeat training they had already completed in another country.

When I was a general surgery intern, I developed an appendicitis while assisting a neurosurgeon doing a craniotomy for a brain aneurysm. When the procedure was finished, I excused myself, telling the neurosurgeon I needed to go have my appendix taken out! About two hours later I was lying on the same operating room table, having an appendectomy performed by a Vietnamese general surgeon who had practiced for many years in his country, but was required to do a repeat residency when he came to our country. He did a great job and I was back to work three days later.

 States are starting to see the value of letting internationally licensed physicians help fill their doctor shortages. Govs. Kim Reynolds and Glenn Youngkin signed bills recently allowing Iowa and Virginia to join Tennessee, Florida, Wisconsin and Idaho to create a pathway for doctors practicing abroad to become fully licensed without completing unnecessary post-medical-school “residency” training in the U.S.

States all face their own challenges because the distribution of physicians across the country isn’t uniform. Virginia ranks 33rd in the country for the supply of general surgeons, while Georgia ranks 41st in primary-care-physician supply. Michigan’s doctor-patient ratio for psychiatry is 26% worse than the national average.

These bills have earned bipartisan support because the doctor shortage affects everyone—whether Republican or Democrat, rural or urban. In Virginia, the bill’s lead sponsor was Kathy Tran, who leads the Democratic caucus in the House of Delegates. Wisconsin similarly saw a partnership between Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers. Near-unanimity in the Tennessee and Idaho legislatures and bipartisan sponsorship in Michigan show that despite partisan rancor, states can still solve important challenges together.

Pending bills in Minnesota, Maine, Arizona, Michigan and Massachusetts all deserve to become law. Those states know that a doctor shortage is looming. They want to increase the number of practitioners, rather than merely trying to increase medical-school enrollment or train more residents in the next 10 years. Colorado and Illinois have also taken steps to address this issue by mandating that their state medical boards create licensing pathways for international physicians. Those pathways remain under development.

Wolfson says, “On Jan. 1, Tennessee stood alone as the only state allowing internationally licensed doctors to become fully licensed. By year’s end, we may see more than 10 states with a legislative or administrative pathway on the books. As America searches for an answer to the looming catastrophe of patients losing access to care, foreign physicians should be called upon to help to fill those gaps. Every patient should have a doctor to see as soon as he needs one.”

This is just another piece of the puzzle needed to solve our physician shortage. Ideally, we should train a sufficient number of our own countrymen to fill the need for more doctors. But until we do, making it easier and faster for well-trained foreign physicians to practice makes sense.