Issue Summary News Policy Report  Take Action to Solve the Health Care Worker Shortage

Issue Summary

Many New Mexicans struggle to access health care due to a growing shortage of doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals in the state. The number of primary care physicians in New Mexico fell by 30% from 2017-2021 and the numbers of ob-gyns, registered nurses, dentists, psychiatrists, pharmacists, and EMTs have also declined sharply in recent years. New Mexico has the oldest physician workforce in the nation, with nearly 40% of the state’s doctors aged 60 or older and expected to retire by 2030.

To reverse this growing shortage, in 2024 Think New Mexico published a new report proposing a ten-point plan with 20 separate legislative recommendations to make the state a more attractive place for health care workers to practice. Think New Mexico’s proposals include:

• Reforming the state’s medical malpractice act, since New Mexico currently has the second highest number of medical malpractice lawsuits per capita in the U.S. Recommended reforms include capping attorney’s fees; raising the legal standard for awarding punitive damages and capping them; and prohibiting the filing of multiple malpractice lawsuits over a single injury. These and similar reforms have already been implemented by other states from across the political spectrum, as detailed in Think New Mexico’s report.

• Joining all ten interstate healthcare worker compacts so that doctors, psychologists, and other providers licensed in other states can more easily provide care to New Mexico patients, including via tele-health.

• Creating a centralized credentialing system to reduce administrative burdens on doctors and other health care professionals and make it easier for patients to keep their providers when their insurance coverage changes.

• Making New Mexico’s student loan repayment program for health care professionals more competitive with the vast majority of other states, including all of New Mexico’s neighbors, which offer higher loan repayment amounts.

• Making New Mexico’s tax policy friendlier to health care workers by permanently repealing the state’s Gross Receipts Tax on medical services and increasing and expanding the Rural Health Care Practitioner Tax Credit.

• Enhancing Medicaid reimbursement rates to health care providers, since New Mexico has a higher proportion of patients insured by Medicaid than any other state, and Medicaid generally pays less than the cost of providing treatment. The report also recommends reducing the rate of Medicaid claim denials so that health care providers receive the full payment they earn for treating patients insured by Medicaid.

• Growing more of our own health care workers by expanding access to health-care-related career and technical education (CTE) in high school. Recommended reforms include providing liability protections to employers that offer CTE programs and revising the state’s CTE pathways so that more students earn certifications in high school (e.g., as EMTs or nursing assistants).

• Expanding access to higher education in health care fields by increasing salaries for the faculty training future health care professionals and providing a tax credit for the preceptors who provide community-based education for doctors, nurses, and others.

• Importing more international medical graduates into New Mexico by allowing fully trained and vetted doctors from other countries to apply for a provisional license to practice under supervision in the state for two years, after which they could apply for a full medical license.

• Using some of the state’s one-time surplus from oil and gas taxes to create a $2 billion permanent fund for health care to generate income to pay for these and other reforms in perpetuity.

Think New Mexico will be advocating for the enactment of its recommended reforms to address the health care worker shortage during the 2025 legislative session.

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News Coverage

Read an article in the Albuquerque Journal about Think New Mexico’s initiative to end predatory lending and strengthen financial literacy • September 22, 2024