The Receding Specialty of Infectious Diseases and Implications for U.S. Healthcare

Infectious diseases physicians serve on the frontline of disease prevention, outbreak mitigation, and direct patient care across the healthcare continuum. To reverse troubling trends in the ID workforce, policymakers, healthcare administrators, and the public must understand the essential societal role of ID physicians. Solutions include adopting new compensation models, loan forgiveness for medical specialties where demand exceeds supply, reformed immigration policies for staffing medically underserved areas and reinvestment in public health. A receding ID workforce will result in delayed ID specialty care, worse clinical outcomes, worsening antibiotic resistance, increased healthcare costs, decreased pandemic preparedness, and an overall sicker nation.