Nin-Hai Tseng

Washington —- Creating a planning group to address health care challenges on a national level could help ease the looming shortage of doctors, nurses and other health professionals in Georgia and other states, a panel told reporters Thursday.

The recommendation by Nancy Dickey, president of Texas A&M University's Health Science Center, and Shelton Retchin, CEO of the Virginia Commonwealth University Health System, echoes a study conducted by a Washington-based nonprofit seeking to improve the country's health care system.

The Association of Academic Health Centers said that the federal government needs to develop a national health work force policy that would help recruit and retain the hundreds of thousands of physicians, particularly primary care doctors, needed to serve a growing and aging population.

"Piecemeal and incremental policy-making is simply insufficient to address the types of nationwide systemic problems that we face," said Daniel Rahn, president of the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, at a news conference. Rahn chaired the advisory committee that devised the association's report.

When it comes to the number of physicians available per capita, Georgia is near the bottom, 40th out of the 50 states. By 2012, the state is expected to need 20,000 more registered nurses and 600 more dentists, Rahn said. An additional 1,500 physicians in underserved areas will be needed by 2020.

The panel said the hurdles in attracting and retaining health professionals are many. They include education costs, as well as a shortage of faculty available to train health professionals. And a system in which health care standards, such as licensing, vary from state to state complicates these problems.

"It is not just our health system that will be at serious risk, it will be our health and the nation's well-being," said Steven Wartman, the association's president.