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Sacramento created California’s doctor shortage — here’s how to fix it

California leads the nation in doctor shortages.

A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of federal data shows that 6 million Californians live in Primary Care Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs), where less than half of the state’sprimary care needs are being met.

In the Inland Empire, the ratio of primary care physicians falls to as low as 35 per 100,000 residents. The federal benchmark is 60 to 80 ber 100,000. The San Joaquin Valley sits at 39 per 100,000.

Sacramento’s answer, as always, is more “pipeline”: More medical school slots. More residency seats. More loan-forgiveness programs aimed at the same exhausted doctors who are already leaving.

The state’s own Legislative Analyst’s Office reported this February that the flagship residency expansion programs, Song-Brown and CalMedForce, have produced only limited gains in the number of resident slots.

California has a retention crisis disguised as a shortage, and until lawmakers admit that, no number of new doctors will be enough.

I know this. I am an ear, nose and throat surgeon. I completed five years of residency, built my own practice, and last year, at the height of my career, I walked away from clinical medicine entirely.

What pushed me out is what’s hollowing out California medicine at scale. I was one of thousands.

The data are unambiguous. A 2025 study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, led by researchers at UC San Francisco with colleagues at Yale and UCLA, tracked more than 712,000 physicians and found that clinical attrition rose from 3.5 percent in 2013 to 4.9 percent in 2019 — a 40 percent jump in six........

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