Incentives and physician specialty choice: a case study of Florida's Program in Medical Sciences.

The growing shortage of primary care physicians in medically underserved areas of the nation led medical schools and policymakers years ago to design and fund numerous innovative medical education programs to foster the development of a more balanced physician workforce. Florida's Program in Medical Sciences (PIMS) was an example of one such initiative that was established in fall 1971 at Florida State University (FSU). A precursor of the present-day FSU College of Medicine, this program was created specifically to address the growing need for primary care physicians in rural areas of northwest Florida. The results of empirical tests on the career choices of PIMS graduates in the first 20 years provide weak evidence that the program was more effective than the existing channels of medical education in producing additional primary care physicians to rural Florida counties.