In order to circumvent an anticipated serious physician shortage, Tennessee has passed a law, potentially effective 2024, to bypass some US general practice and temporary licensing requirements for immigrant physicians, and the AMA encourages more state medical licensing boards to do the same.
Apparent context:
— this past April, eight months after enacting one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation, Tennessee did quietly pass a law providing narrow exceptions —molar or ectopic pregnancies, to remove a miscarriage, to save the life of the mother and “prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman', but not for rape or incest or fetal anomaly— allowing physicians a defense for exercising “reasonable medical judgment, based upon the facts known to the physician at the time.” (Reportage requirements were reintroduced.)
By then, doctor residency programs in Tennessee had already stopped offering abortion training, all free standing abortion clinics had shut down or moved out of state, doctors had expressed the chilling effect on providing patient care exerted by the initial ban, and some had begun leaving the state to seek work elsewhere.
"Hospital systems will be able to hire experienced practitioners for a very low cost… So now you have these additional bodies who can do the work of a physician, but you don't have to pay them as much as a physician for 2 years. And because some are desperate to work, they will take lower pay as long as they have a pathway to full licensure in Tennessee. What are the protections for these physicians? Who will cover their insurance? Who will be responsible for them, the [attendings]? And will the [attendings] be willing to put their own license on the line for them?"
One in 4 physicians in the US are international medical graduates (IMGs), according to Rep. Sabi "Doc" Kumar, MD, vice chair for the Tennessee House Health Committee and a co-sponsor of the legislation. The law is expected to benefit both experienced physicians and "international medical graduates" just starting out. It does not include visa sponsoring.
And it excludes US citizen IMGs who haven't completed residency —they may be in fellowships or other working situations while trying to apply, sometimes repeatedly, for residency programs, because the US overall has a shortage of that, too, a key cause of the snowballing physician shortage across the country overall— or who practiced in another country.
If all other state medical boards don't loosen their licensing requirements as well, these desperate physicians will be trapped in the only states that allow them to work. ...at low pay that aggravates their inability to leave. And subject to all the other dictates, medical and legal, of states that have attracted them there.
Main sources: Medscape — TennesseeLookout — American Medical Association