The real story is not “health care workforce trends.”
The real story is the adult daughter trying to get Mom seen before a small problem becomes an ambulance ride.
It is the retired rancher who can still fix a fence but cannot find a doctor who understands what 82 years of life does to a body.
It is the family caregiver sitting on hold with a medical office long enough to reconsider civilization, then finally getting an appointment three months out and acting grateful because at least it is not six.
Colorado is getting older.
And we are not building enough care for the people who built the place.
The Denver Post reports that Colorado is struggling to recruit doctors into geriatric medicine, the specialty focused on caring for older adults. The state has only four fellowship slots for young physicians who want that training, and it could not fill all of them this year. Nationally, about three-fifths of geriatric medicine fellowship slots went unfilled, the lowest fill rate of any specialty.
That should stop us.
The Post also notes that as of 2020, the country had about 6,500 geriatricians, roughly one for every 8,600 people over 65. In Colorado, access is heavily concentrated along the Front Range and in Mesa County, while many counties have no geriatrician or nurse practitioner specializing in older adults.
In normal-person English: families are carrying more of the load because the system did not build enough chairs at the table.
This is not a knock on doctors. The physicians who choose elder care deserve respect. They are doing complicated, patient, deeply human work. Older adults often face medication issues, dementia, communication challenges, chronic conditions, mobility problems, and the question nobody likes to ask out loud: what care actually helps at this stage of life?
That takes time.
And time is exactly what our health care machine is bad at valuing.
According to the Post, geriatricians are among the lowest-paid medical specialists. They may see fewer patients per day because their patients’ needs are more complex. Many patients are covered by Medicare, which generally pays less than job-based insurance. Add another year of training and medical school debt that looks like a mortgage with a stethoscope, and you can see why fewer young doctors choose the field.
Again, not complicated.
Just neglected.
A state serious about compassion had better be serious about the unglamorous work of caring for old people.
Not with slogans. Not with a task force that meets twice and produces a PDF nobody reads. With real attention from medical schools, health systems, policymakers, communities, and families.
Because aging is not a political theory.
It is coming for all of us, if we are blessed enough to get there.
The hopeful part is that this work still calls good people. The Post opens with Dr. Amy Beauprez, who found her calling caring for nursing home residents during the early days of COVID. She talked about holding someone’s hand at the end of life and hearing their stories.
That is holy ground, whether the policy people know it or not.
Colorado needs more people willing to stand there.
And we need a system that values them before the crisis shows up with a hospital bracelet.
Source: The Denver Post
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