Nationwide Physician Shortages Likely to Occur Beyond 2015 Based on Grey Forecasting Models

Abstract

The grey models have been successfully implemented to forecast U.S. medical school applicants and matriculants. The intent of using grey models was to assess if medical schools would achieve the AAMC’s enrollment goal of a 30% increase by 2015. The AAMC’s endorsement for enrollment expansion provided a policy option to offset physician workforce shortages. As expected, the grey models outperformed all exponential smoothing models. The predicted result revealed that there would be a 19.2% increase in medical school enrollment, which was almost consistent with the finding of the enrollment expansion plan showing a 17.0% increase from 2002 to 2012. Forecasts for Asian and Hispanic students entering in 2015 are on pace to surpass the AAMC’s enrollment goal. However, African American matriculants would miss the mark by 7%, which is reflected by the small percentage of increase in African American applicants. The number of Caucasian matriculants has changed slightly, which would only be expected to increase 12% by 2015. On the whole, the predicted percentage of increase in the total U.S. medical school enrollment by 2015 would fall short by 3%. The forecasting results from the grey models signal of impending physician shortages are likely to occur in the foreseeable future.