Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

EL PASO -- Doctors hunting for jobs in Texas can reduce the waiting time before they are allowed to practice, but only if they will work in El Paso or other underserved communities.

Health-care administrators and officials of the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce marked the recent passage of a bill that grants provisional licenses to qualified doctors awaiting their licenses from the Texas Medical Board.

The change means some doctors will shave off up to a year of waiting.

"We have thousands of applications sitting on a desk in Austin -- doctors from California, New York, Pennsylvania -- wanting to come to Texas. So right, there are professionals that could work here in El Paso," said the bill's author, state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso.

"What we're saying is 'Come now. We need you. We'll work out the details of your license later. We just need to make sure you're a professional ready to do the job.' "

The new licensing policy took effect Sept. 1. It grants doctors nine-month provisional licenses as long as they are licensed in good standing in another state. In addition, they must pass a licensing exam, undergo a criminal background check, and be sponsored by a Texas physician who will practice with them.

Doctors with provisional licenses can practice only at locations designated as medically underserved. Shapleigh said most of these places are on the border with Mexico and in rural areas of the Texas Panhandle and East Texas. "We are the biggest city that qualifies," he said, "and we're in the best position to use this bill to attract and retain doctors."

By 2012, the El Paso area will need more than 3,000 health professionals. Estimates by the chamber say those include 104 pediatricians; 280 doctors in general, family or internal medicine practice; 1,350 nurses; 418 pharmacists; 242 general dentists; and 290 social workers.

Shapleigh said another recently approved bill also will help fill the doctor shortage. It will pay the tuition of doctors who agree to practice in medically underserved areas such as El Paso. The state will pay 20 percent of the tuition bill for each year the doctors practice here, he said.

The provisional licensing bill was pushed by the chamber, which helped hatch the idea during workshops among the health-care community last fall.

"This is important to our community because we do have a shortage of physicians, which in turn causes a lack of access for patients to see physicians," said Susan Guerra, chairwoman of the chamber's Health Care Council.

Finding good doctors should become less difficult for all El Paso hospitals and other health-care providers, said John Harris, president of the Sierra Providence Health Network. "It's going to help us greatly in successfully recruiting physicians to El Paso, which has been a great challenge."