Physician-workforce and educational planning in Canada: has the pendulum swung too far?

Since the early '80s, and especially since the publication in 1991 of Toward Integrated Medical Resource Policies for Canada (the Barer-Stoddart Report), received wisdom has been that there is an oversupply of physicians in Canada and that medical school enrollment should be cut. In a CMAJ article published July 1, 1994, that described a computer program to forecast the supply and demand of health care resources, Denton, Gafni and Spencer projected a substantial physician surplus in Ontario in the years 2000 and 2010, despite substantial cuts in Ontario medical school enrollment. The author questions the data used in the forecasts and reaches different conclusions. She advances an alternative hypothesis that current medical school admission levels are, in fact, too low.