Surgery and the GMENAC report: a reality test.

Concern for a possible oversupply of physicians caused the Secretary of Health and Human Services to create the Graduate Medical Education National Advisory Committee (GMENAC) to analyze the nation's supply and requirements for physicians. Issued in 1980, the GMENAC Report projected an aggregate surplus of 70,000 physicians in 1990. Surgeons in particular were projected to exceed requirements by 40%. I evaluated the GMENAC parameters using the quantitative methodology initially developed for the 1970 Study on Surgical Services for the United States. This assessment of the GMENAC projections indicated increased population-based use of surgical intervention and projected wide interspecialty variation in average surgeon productivity with an even larger excess of surgeons than that projected for 1990 by GMENAC.