in communities with the highest poverty rates, close to one-third of all physicians are foreign-trained. In states like North Dakota, where Mr. Shusterman said up to 75% of the communities are medically underserved (meaning they have less than one primary care physician per 3,500 residents), about 40% of doctors who work there are foreign-trained.
“If I’m 50 miles from the nearest doctor and—God forbid—I have a heart attack, I’m going to die,” he said. “That’s already happening now in many areas, and it’s going to get much worse if we start turning foreign doctors away.”
Foreign-born doctors also disproportionately represent certain specialties, according to the American Immigration Council. Nearly 53% of geriatric specialists are foreign-born, while 41% of all endocrinologists were trained in foreign countries.
Mr. Shusterman isn’t just concerned about day-to-day patient care. He predicts that medical education research in the US will suffer as well. At City of Hope National Medical Center in Los Angeles, a leader in cancer, HIV, and diabetes research, more than 90% of the physicians who are conducting post-doctorate work are foreign-born, he said.
Echoing Mr. Shusterman’s concerns, the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians recently released a joint statement arguing that the ban worsens the growing physician shortage, widens the physician gaps in underserved areas, hurts US physician-training programs, and hampers the collaboration of physicians who work to solve public health threats.
President Trump’s third iteration of the travel ban, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in June, affects seven countries—North Korea, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Venezuela. Iran and Syria are the sixth and 10th largest contributors of foreign physicians to the US, respectively, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute.
While some experts predict the ban will result in an immediate loss of more than 100 doctors in the next year through the residency match program, they argue that the ban will have more far-reaching consequences.
In addition to the ban, the US Department of Labor earlier this year temporarily delayed the processing of H-1B visas for more than 4,000 international medical graduates who had already been accepted to US residency programs.
“We’re creating a chilly climate for foreign students from any country looking to practice in the US,” as well as the estimated 15,000 physicians from the banned countries who are already practicing here, says Travis Singleton, executive vice president at Merritt Hawkins, a national physician recruiting firm. “If the United States becomes known as a country that doesn’t want foreigners, we’re just creating one more barrier that we just don’t need right now in our profession.”
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