Health Affairs

Health Affairs, 28, no. 1 (2009): w89-w90 (Published online 4 December 2008) doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.28.1.w89 © 2009 by Project HOPE	New Online   Getting Health Reform Done   After the State of the Union   Incremental Reform   E-Health in Developing World   Most-Read Articles in 2009

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Doctors, Dollars & Quality

Philip Musgrove, Deputy Editor

These are complicated questions, as the following papers make clear—and the answers are based almost entirely on separate sets of statistical analyses. Let’s walk through the arguments pro and con—from those who contend we don’t have enough doctors, and from those who contend that what we need, both to save money and to improve health, is not more doctors overall but more general practitioners and fewer specialists.

How many doctors, and what kinds? Both the size and the composition of the physician workforce might be expected to affect health outcomes. If you have enough doctors of the "right" type in a given community, it may seem . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Specialized training matters—or does it?Does the level of overall health care spending produce better-quality care?

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