An Evaluation of the Vulnerable Physician Workforce in the United States During the Coronavirus Disease-19 Pandemic

Rohan Khera; Lovedeep Singh Dhingra; Snigdha Jain; Harlan Krumholz

The coronavirus disease-19 pandemic threatens to overwhelm the healthcare resources of the country, 1 but also poses a personal hazard to healthcare workers, including physicians. 2 Physicians are at an elevated risk of acquiring the disease through exposure to patients who may be symptomatic with the disease or its asymptomatic carriers across the spectrum of clinical specialties. Notably, the physician workforce is not only at risk of losing time spent in clinical care due to these exposures, but at a personal risk from severe disease that requires hospitalization and is associated with high morbidity and mortality. Notably, physicians 60 years of age and older are at a particularly elevated risk, with 80% of deaths in China concentrated in this age group. 3, 4 In the early experience in the US, nearly half of all hospitalizations and intensive care unit admissions, and nearly 80% of deaths have occurred in this age group as well. 4 To address the potential impact of excluding physicians with a high risk of adverse outcomes based on age, we evaluated the current patterns of age of licensed physicians across the United States.