By the year 2020, the Association of American Medical Colleges predicts there will be a shortage of 6,000 doctors in Michigan.

Central Michigan University Trustee Sam Kottamasu said the nation is predicted to have a 20 percent decrease in doctors by 2020.

Mark Cwiek, health sciences professor and Health Administration Division director, said Michigan will be down 12 percent in physicians in the next 12 years.

“The rest of the country will be down 8 percent,” he said.

The shortage is greatest in family care, general practice, pediatricians, obstetricians and gynecologists, Cwiek said. He said students are becoming specialists because of the higher compensation.

“There is an expected shortage of both primary care and specialists,” said Kottamasu, Board of Trustees Medical School Committee chair and a Saginaw radiologist.

Cwiek said distribution of doctors from rural to metropolitan areas is another problem resulting from the doctor shortage.

“Suburban Detroit tends to do pretty well – it’s the inner-city and rural areas that are short (on doctors),” Cwiek said.

Facilities and family life are other contributors to the doctor shortage, he said.

“The doctor shortage will be more severe in rural parts of the country compared to metropolitan,” Kottamasu said.

In addition, Cwiek said rural facilities might not be as modern as in medical training.

“Isabella County does pretty well. The unemployment is low and the insurance is better,” he said.

However, Cwiek said areas just to the north of Mount Pleasant have shortages.

Cwiek said one of the causes for the doctor shortage started in the 1970s. There was a surplus of physicians, so medical schools held back enrollment. The U.S. population grew by 70 million people, and now there are not enough doctors to cope, he said.

Cwiek sees potential problems with a Central Michigan University medical school.

He said it is beneficial to open up education in the medical field, but it might not be the answer to the doctor shortage.

“If what we do provides more opportunities for specialists, we will still have a shortage. We need an incentive to make people want to go into primary care and stay in primary care,” Cwiek said.

Cwiek said there is a shortage of nurses, but it is difficult to create nursing school facilities because of the lack of the available faculty.

“There is a very high demand for registered nurses,” he said.

Cwiek said the difficulty of nursing schools is finding available faculty. He also said the nature of the job, like tough weekends and night hours, adds to the problem.

However, he did say nursing jobs are plentiful.

“People with nursing backgrounds can get what they want,” Cwiek said.

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E-mail the author: Lindsay Knake