Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI
Jerry Gurwitz, a 68-year-old geriatrician based in Massachusetts, is at a tricky point in his career.
He's spent decades taking care of older Americans, but now, as Gurwitz approaches the age of some of his own patients, he sees a brewing problem with his profession: there aren't many people willing to take his job, and he has serious doubts over whether there will be enough doctors to properly take care of people as they get older, he told Business Insider.
Gurwitz, who graduated medical school in 1983, said he saw this problem brewing decades ago as he was completing his medical education. Part of the reason he chose to specialize in geriatric medicine was because practically comparatively few people were interested in the field, he said, a trend that hasn't improved more than forty years later.
"These people are going to be retiring. There's not substantial interest on the part of trainees to go into the field," he said of the supply of geriatricians today. "I can't see how the healthcare system isn't going to be overwhelmed over the next decade. It'll be too much, and too many people to take care of."
Medical professionals say the problem has been in the making for years, with the supply of doctors trained specifically to treat older adults nowhere near keeping pace with a quickly aging US population.
There's no clear path to addressing the shortage, Gurwitz said. He and other medical professionals told BI the influx of older patients could lead to a quality-of-care crisis.
The problem is visible in the numbers.
According to an estimate from the American Geriatrics Society, the US will need some 30,000Β geriatriciansΒ by the end of the decade. Yet, the total number of board-certified geriatricians declined to around 7,400 in 2022, according to the American Board of Medical Specialities, down from around 10,000 at the start of the century βand the US population is quickly getting older.
According to the latest projections, the number of Americans aged 65 and older is expected to soar to 82 million by 2050, up 47% from 2022 levels.
Timothy Farrell, a geriatrician and a professor of medicine at the University of Utah, says the signs of strain on the profession have been increasing for years, but have become more severe recently.
Across the board, wait times have gotten longer, with the average wait for a physician appointment rising to 26 days, according to one 2022 survey, up 8% in five years.
"We could probably double our space, and we would very quickly fill," Farrell said, adding that he believed stress in the geriatric unit could be higher than in other areas of the hospital.
R. Sean Morrison, a geriatrician at Mount Sinai, says he knows others in the industry who say they have waiting lists that stretch for six months.
The strain of caring for older adults is particularly evident in nursing homes. A survey of over 400 nursing homes conducted by the American Health Care Association found that 72% had fewer employees in 2024 than they did prior to the pandemic.
The survey also showed that 57% of nursing homes said they had a waiting list, 46% said they began to limit their intake of residents, and 7% said they were turning away patients on a daily basis.
"We don't have right now, nor will we unfortunately ever have enough people who are trained," Morrison said. "That's evidenced by the amount of time it takes for an appointment within our geriatric practices. It's evidenced by the number of older adults that need to be taken into the hospital that the inpatient services don't have the capacity to see. And it's just the tip of the iceberg."
Gurwitz says he had always wanted to be a geriatrician, but the sentiment is rare among medical professionals. Data from the National Resident Matching Program showed that only 174 out of 419 available positions in geriatric specialty programs were filled in 2023, making it one of the most unfilled programs the organization tracks.
Convincing people to specialize in the field isn't easy.
For one, the profession doesn't pay as much as some specializations. According to data from Salary.com, the median salary for a geriatric physician in New York hovered around $264,163. That's less than half the median salary of a cardiologist in New York, which stood at $573,498 a year as of March 1.
There is also a perception that geriatrics medicine is a less distinguishing field than other areas, Gurwitz said.
"I think there are certain fields of medicine that are more prestigious in which they are more respected than others. Geriatrics, for one reason or another, is not among those," he added.
Farrell said he thinks that the complexity of treating older patients could be another factor turning professionals away from the trade. Geriatricians treat older adults who typically have overlapping health conditions, with some patients taking as many as 20 medications, he said.
"How do you prevent falls? How do you manage multiple chronic conditions for the same person?" he said. "I think there's people in primary care who have more or less comfort with the complexity taking care of complicated, older adults, and that's what geriatrician is trained to do."
Nicholas Klein/Getty Images
A major earthquake struck near California's coast on Thursday, and aftershocks are still ongoing.
The 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck at about 10:44 a.m. Pacific Time. Its epicenter was offshore, about 62 miles west-southwest of Ferndale, California, according to data from the United States Geological Survey.
The USGS website reported more than 35 smaller quakes across that area over the ensuing three hours, of magnitudes ranging from 2.5 to 4.7, including two quakes that occurred inland.
"There's been quite a lot of aftershocks," Harold Tobin, Washington's state seismologist and the director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, told Business Insider.
USGS/Esri/HERE/Garmin/Β© OpenStreetMap contributors/the GIS user community
As of Thursday afternoon, the USGS forecasts up to 130 aftershocks with a magnitude of 3 or higher within the next week, and a 53% chance of aftershocks larger than magnitude 5.
"It's perfectly plausible that there could be a larger aftershock or more than one larger aftershock," Tobin said.
The USGS estimates the odds are 1 in 100 of an aftershock with a magnitude of 7 or greater.
The fault region which produced the 7.0 earthquake is a very seismically active one.
It's called the Mendocino triple junction because three different tectonic plates meet there: the Pacific, North American, and Juan de Fuca plates.
It's right between two notorious earthquake zones, at the northern end of the San Andreas fault and the southern end of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. The CSZ has some of the planet's greatest seismic potential, capable of producing quakes as big as 9.0.
The Mendocino triple junction, however, is less impressive.
"Somewhere in the magnitude sevens range is about as big as things seem to get out there," Tobin said.
The region has produced five earthquakes of magnitude 7 or larger in the past century, according to USGS.
The Thursday quake could have slightly increased the chance of other earthquakes along adjacent faults by increasing stress in those areas.
"It's unlikely that it had a really large, significant impact" on those fault systems, though, Tobin said. The odds are "not zero, but very low," he added.
The initial quake triggered tsunami warnings and evacuations β which have since been canceled β along the coast of northern California to southern Oregon, including the San Francisco Bay Area.
The warnings lasted about an hour. The National Tsunami Warning Center canceled them around 11:54 a.m. local time, saying there was no longer a threat.
Most likely, the reason there was no tsunami is that the earthquake came from plates moving side-by-side against each other. This is called a strike-slip earthquake. Because the motion was mostly horizontal, and not vertical, it didn't push the ocean above upward to create a wave.
Even so, the warning was "warranted," Tobin said.
"Until we know enough parameters of the earthquake and can verify whether there is or isn't an actual wave, it's wise to have those warnings," he added.
The USGS also reported on X a "low likelihood of shaking-related fatalities. Some damage is possible and the impact should be relatively localized."
Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for three counties in Northern California which were near the offshore epicenter of the quake.
"We're concerned about damage," he said in a press briefing, adding that the declaration would allow the state to "provide more resources."
According to CNN, about 10,000 homes and businesses in Humboldt County βΒ the area nearest the epicenter β were without power immediately after the large quake. As of Thursday afternoon, though, PowerOutage.us reported fewer than 500 customers without power there.
Newsom said that "early damage assessments are being made," but that the state had no additional information to share yet.
This is a developing story, check back for more information.
