Speech #930311727

We have insufficient primary care physicians and probably have more specialists than are requiredin 1949. only 36 percent of physicians limited their practice to a specialty. in 1970. 79 percent were specialists. In New York State. there is a 2.243 shortfall. the greatest in the Nation. of family physicians and general practitioners. We increasingly continue to rely upon noncitizen foreign medical graduates to provide health care to the extent that we now have what has been termed a "medical underground" where there is an everincreasing group of foreign medical graduates of noncertified physicians with unsupervised direct patient care responsibilities. And unfortunately for New York City. about onefourth of all foreigntrained physicians practice there to the extent that about 36 percent of the physicians in New York State are graduates of foreign medical schools. In fact. 94 percent of psychiatric residents in the State hospital system are foreign medical graduates and 40 percent of the physicians in the mental hospital system are unlicensed.