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1 - Most people probably don't know what hospitalists are. They are internal medicine MDs who work in hospitals. And they are a large % of the MDs at the front lines. 42% of them are immigrants. And our MD immigration system is in a shambles. https://www.aamc.org/system/files/reports/1/june2016hospitalistsagrowingpartoftheprimarycareworkforce.pdf
2 - I wrote about 50+ short term and long term fixes the other day that come from me and my colleagues at @GraduateMedical. But not much is happening and we're going to pay a steep price for this inaction.
3 - Immigrant doctors in the US are coming down with the virus and many will die. This story from the front pages of the NY Times today is not that different from what we're facing - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/world/europe/coronavirus-doctors-immigrants.html
4 - The biggest obstacle is that we have as many as 24,000 MDs waiting in green card lines and those doctors have every incentive NOT to go to COVID hotspots.
5 - They can expect a 20+year wait on temporary H-1B work visas until they get a green card. Any misstep in their maintaining their H-1B status could mean their green card dreams do down the tube.
6 - And what if they die or become disabled. Their families could end up deported. Would you take the risk if you had a choice?
7 - We owe it to these people who are saving our lives to fix this mess and do right by them. Congress needs to incorporate HR2895 and S948 into the next COVID bill. Those bills also fix a lot of other problems with MD immigration in addition to the green card one BTW.
8 - They also need to add short term legislative fixes specifically related to the current crisis. And our agencies need to get their acts together and make the changes I mentioned at https://threader.app/thread/1243714628904988672
8 - That's the end of this thread. I was just so incensed by what I read in the Times this morning. We can do better than the UK, but in many respects, we're doing even worse by our international medical graduates.
