{"id":122925,"date":"2026-01-14T15:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T15:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/122925\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T15:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T15:17:08","slug":"health-wanted-texas-faces-growing-doctor-shortage-newsradio-740-ktrh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/122925\/","title":{"rendered":"Health Wanted: Texas Faces Growing Doctor Shortage | NewsRadio 740 KTRH"},"content":{"rendered":"

The doctor is out—that’s what more Texans will be hearing in the coming years, as the state’s surging population has caused a doctor shortage<\/a> that will likely get worse before it gets better. The Department of State Health Services predicts Texas will see a shortage of 10,000 doctors by 2032, due to rising population and retirements outpacing replacements from medical schools.<\/p>\n

The population growth is an obvious factor in the shortage of doctors, but doctors working in Texas point to other root causes. Houston-area Dr. Mary Talley Bowden<\/a> says the state’s licensing process takes too long, and often leaves qualified doctors waiting for approvals while they could be seeing patients. “I also don’t think Texas is as ‘doctor friendly’ as people might think, based on what I and others have experienced during the pandemic,” she tells KTRH. “I believe the medical side of our state is not consistent with the freedom-loving spirit of Texas in any way.”<\/p>\n

Dr. Bowden and other physicians were targeted and punished<\/a> by the state medical board repeatedly during and after the pandemic, for going against the medical establishment on treatments and vaccines. “I just interviewed Dr. Stella Immanuel (another Houston physician), and she had more than 30 complaints from the Texas Medical Board, all over prescribing Ivermectin,” says Bowden.<\/p>\n

The Texas Legislature passed the DOCTOR Act<\/a> last year, which allows the state to license foreign-trained doctors. But Dr. Bowden is skeptical. “There’s been a lot of reports about fraudulent licenses from other countries,” she says. “So I do wonder how they are going to vet these doctors to make sure they do have legitimate degrees.”<\/p>\n

Ultimately, there is no magic solution to create more doctors. Which is why Dr. Bowden recommends looking out for yourself. “Find ways to be less reliant on the medical system,” she says. “Manage your weight, watch what you eat, get exercise, get enough sleep, manage your stress, and become less reliant on the system, that’s my personal strategy.”<\/p>\n

“So I would say let’s not look to the government to solve this problem…see what you can do about it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The doctor is out—that’s what more Texans will be hearing in the coming years, as the state’s surging…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[52446,13313,584,2244,56,58,57,66,229,16235,223,27,8397],"class_list":{"0":"post-122925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-doctor-shortage","9":"tag-doctors","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare","12":"tag-houston","13":"tag-houston-headlines","14":"tag-houston-news","15":"tag-local","16":"tag-medical","17":"tag-medicine","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-texas","20":"tag-texas-department-of-state-health-services"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}