Panama Addresses the Medical Specialist Shortages. Minsa Considering Hiring Foreign Doctors.

The Ministry of Health (Minsa) is evaluating the possibility of hiring foreign medical specialists to fill critical vacancies in the public system, given the lack of available professionals in some highly complex areas.  Health Minister Fernando Boyd Galindo confirmed this Wednesday, September 9, that resorting to professionals from abroad is one of the alternatives being considered by the Executive Branch to fill positions that cannot be filled with national personnel.  The potential hiring would be conditional upon the unavailability of qualified Panamanian doctors to fill those positions.  The areas with the greatest shortages identified by the institution are cardiology, anesthesiology, and oncology. Boyd Galindo pointed out that in Azuero there is only one cardiologist and one anesthesiologist. 

The shortage of specialists also affects the Social Security Fund (CSS), which has 77 vacant positions. Marcos Young, National Director of Health Services and Benefits at the CSS, has indicated that this is a systemic problem involving the distribution of specialists, their training, the hiring processes, and the difficulties in retaining them in some regions.  As part of the strategy to expand coverage, the Ministry of Health maintains the regionalization of oncology services, with new points of care in the central provinces and in the western region.  One of these points is located in Bugaba, Chiriquí, where the aim is to bring specialized services closer to patients in the interior of the country and reduce the need to travel to the capital to receive certain treatments.