Have you ever had to wait to see a doctor? Perhaps it took you a few months to get an appointment or maybe you had to sit for a long time in a waiting room? When you are ill or not feeling well, minutes can feel like hours and months can feel like years.

Now imagine this: toss in another 46 million additional Americans wanting appointments with the same number of doctors currently in practice. That is just one scenario that could play out if we do not make dramatic changes to our medical workforce.

The American Academy of Family Practice predicts there may be a shortage of 40,000 family doctors in just 10 years if medical schools continue to graduate only half the needed numbers into primary care. It is estimated that by 2025, we will be short 124,000 doctors. There are already over 215 million primary care visits scheduled each year. Just think how many more will occur as the population swells and ages.

It is not just the patients who feel frustrated by the physician shortage; doctors feel the strain, too. Consider the doctors working in underserved urban poor and rural communities who want to retire or reduce their hours to part time and cannot without leaving a further hole in local care. We've all heard reports of some communities without any medical care whatsoever and patients who have to drive for hours to get it. I remember when I was a resident at the VA Hospital in San Francisco and saw patients who had driven five hours from Redding, California, to visit our clinics, including one patient who had just had a heart attack!

I always like to believe that by facing big challenges, we can grow and create exciting opportunities. Now is such a time if we dare to be bold and innovative. It's up to us to change the healthcare landscape in our nation. I want to share one solution with you...

At the turn of this century, I chaired the National Task Force on Physician Reentry when I was with the Office on Women's Health within the Department of Health and Human Services. At the time I wanted to examine reentry issues because I was contacted by so many fellow female doctors eager to return to practice after having raised their children. Initially I thought this was really just a women's issue. I was surprised to learn that men wanted the ability to have periods of clinical inactivity and then return to the workforce, too. Talk about an equal opportunity issue! The task force met for over a year and we published our recommendations in 2002 (Mark, S., Gupta, J.  Reentry Into Clinical Practice. JAMA. 2002; 1091-1096).

We all know that with the aging of the population the prospect of vastly expanded medical coverage and the potential need for increased numbers of doctors during public health emergencies such as pandemics, natural disasters, and bio-terrorism, immediate action is needed. For example, we see in Argentina that they have declared a public health emergency because their medical system is overwhelmed with the number of H1N1 (Swine) flu cases that have occurred during their winter flu season. This could happen in the U.S., as well. Even though we are planning for it, we still need doctors -- and lots of them -- if the pandemic continues in waves over many months or years.

One potential solution is the development and support of physician reentry programs. Physician reentry is defined as returning to professional activity/clinical practice for which one has been trained or certified after an extended period of time. The Physician Reentry into Workforce project, established in 2006 and building upon the work of my original task force, is a collaboration of over 20 physician membership organizations, regulatory groups, and educators.

Under the leadership of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, significant progress has been made by this project to address competency assessment, educational, licensing, and credentialing requirement, along with strategies to encourage physicians to reenter clinical practice.

Although it is important to ensure that new physicians enter primary care, it would be a waste to not utilize the vast talent and rich experience of doctors who have left clinical practice but now wish to return to serve the public. We cannot afford to wait to build the pipeline of new talent.

If you believe that this is a good idea, please contact me or the White House (www.whitehouse.gov). It is through public support that we can change our healthcare system. There is 'no time to wait.' Our lives depend on it.