With a lack of advanced medical professionals, the United States will not meet the goals of the healthcare reform.

“Currently America faces serious shortages in the combined workforce of physician service providers, advance practice nurses, and physician assistants over the next couple of decades,” according to a study that reported data gathered from organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing and the Physician Assistant Education Association.

For Americans, more accessible patient care might actually prove to be a repercussion of the healthcare reform.

“Staff shortages looming in wake of healthcare reform,” a story, featured in today’s Nurse.com News, mentioned that shortages of people working within the physicians services sector had been a foreseeable problem long before the healthcare reform was even written.

“It is important to note that more than two-thirds of advanced clinicians are physicians and that the U.S. is training fewer physicians per capita each year,” said Richard Cooper, MD, professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.

“Despite the participation of more advance practice nurses and physician assistants, in both primary and specialty practices, the physician shortage has increased about 1% annually and is now 7% to 8% nationally,” said Cooper, “although its severity varies in different locales,”