Doctor shortage

philstar.com · Mar 1, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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We have heard so much about problems in providing medical services for the poor, essentially in government facilities. Even among the middle class, this is a problem. The rich simply fly to Singapore or Hong Kong to get the medical attention they need. I come from a family of doctors. My parents, a sister, two brothers-in-law and two nieces are doctors. My father was a professor of medicine at UST for the longest time. He also taught in other colleges of medicine including one in Pangasinan in his later years. My parents and the two brothers-in-law have passed on, the niece who is here is in pediatrics and my sister and my other doctor niece are in the US so, I am on my own these days. Seeing a doctor is a minimum of a two-hour wait rather than a consultation over dinner. But since I live almost next to a major medical center, getting the services of a specialist is not a problem. It just takes time. Some doctors have clinics in two other places in NCR and are often delayed by traffic. It is obvious from their waiting rooms that their caseloads are quite large. Being number 20 in the list of patients is not uncommon. One doctor I know sees all the patients in his waiting list for the day, even if it takes him beyond 9 p.m. They are not super humans and they get tired or burned out like the rest of us. If it seems there is a doctor shortage in Metro Manila, pity those in secondary cities or distant provinces. It must be true that a good number of Filipinos live and die without seeing a doctor. The Philippines has a doctor-to-population ratio far below international standard. Recent estimates put it at around 3.6 to four doctors per 10,000 people, while the World Health Organization recommends about 10 per 10,000 (equivalent to one doctor per 1,000 people). Most doctors are concentrated in urban centers. Policies such as return-of-service requirements for scholarships can help get more doctors into underserved areas, but the problem is long-term retention and funding. EDCOM II reported that the Philippines’ medical education system is facing a severe crisis. There is a massive shortage of 290,000 health care workers. The system is described as having a very leaky pipeline, with 56 percent of students in health programs not entering the workforce, largely due to high attrition rates and failure in licensure exams. EDCOM II is supporting a “ladderized” education framework designed specifically for Barangay Health Workers to eventually become doctors, nurses or other medical professionals to address our massive shortage of health care workers. There are approximately 78 officially recognized medical schools in the Philippines that offer the Doctor of Medicine program. That’s a lot of schools. When my father was still teaching at the UST College of Medicine, there were less than 10. Despite the vastly increased number of medical schools, there are only around 3,000 to 5,000 new doctor graduates per year… hardly enough to keep up with population growth, retirements and migration. Studying to be a doctor is also expensive, more than P500,000 a year. Most medical schools are private. The Doktor Para sa Bayan Act expanded the number of state medical schools that do not charge for tuition. The quality of medical graduates varies. Some medical colleges often achieve very high licensure passing rates (80 to 100 percent) compared with national averages that historically range from 50 percent to 77 percent. Putting up more medical schools is not easy. Getting a good faculty is a major problem. The best doctors are usually very busy in their practice and do not have time to teach. We should attract retired Fil-Am doctors to come home and teach. Many of them are specialty board certified and are familiar with the latest innovations in medical practice. Many also want to give back to the motherland. According to the Professional Regulation Commission, there are about 159,283 registered physicians nationally. Of these, only about 59.7 percent (95,000 doctors) are actively practicing in the Philippines. This means a substantial portion of licensed doctors are not seeing patients (they may be retired, unemployed in the field, working abroad, in non-clinical roles, or for other reasons). The age of specialization is upon us. Still, we need more doctors working on primary care: family medicine, general internal medicine and general pediatrics. These are widely under-supplied relative to population needs, especially outside major cities. I somehow got added to an email group of older Filipino doctors here and in the US who were probably students of my father at UST. They graduated in the 60s and they often write about the golden age of medicine and medical education in the Philippines. Here is one observation. “In the 1960s, those who took the Philippine Medical Board and ECFMG exams were self-reviewed, and most examinees passed on their first try. “Also, in the 1960s to 1970s, the Philippines was the center of education in Asia. Many came to study in the Philippines from all over Asia and even from the Middle East. “What happened later, I suppose I’ll say, ‘the Filipinos outsmarted themselves,’ which led to the steady deterioration of the socioeconomic and political well-being of the Philippines through continuing graft and corruption.” And the practice of medicine suffered as well. It used to be that some of our best medical graduates went to the US to train and some returned. Filipino medical graduates were held in high esteem abroad. My sister easily got into Yale Medical School for her specialty training after graduation from UP. Today, the top foreign doctors in the US are Indians rather than Filipinos. Our medical graduates no longer train abroad as much. That’s probably because we need to fast-track getting more of them in clinics and hospitals so no Filipino dies because there wasn’t a doctor around to help. Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco