By McKenna Horsley
Kentucky Lantern
Republican Senate President Robert Stivers wants three Kentucky universities to work together to find solutions to the state’s doctor shortage.
Republicans and a Democrat on the Senate Health Services Committee backed Stivers’ Senate Joint Resolution 116 on Wednesday, March 4. The resolution would direct the University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville and Eastern Kentucky University to “coordinate a search for actionable solutions to the physician shortages and to explore and expand health care opportunities” with their communities, state agencies, professional associations and more invested in health care in Kentucky.
“We hope that they will engage other entities like UPike (University of Pikeville), which is private, like the Kentucky Hospital Association, the Kentucky Medical Association, the other associations that might be in the realm of health care to come up with solutions since they are basically going to be the largest providers … of the doctors,” Stivers told the committee.
UK and UofL have established medical schools. EKU has been working toward opening an osteopathic medicine college for a few years and has asked the legislature for more than $45 million to put in a reserve fund needed for accreditation. UPike has an osteopathic medicine college.
An August 2025 report from the Legislative Research Commission (LRC) found that Kentucky will have a shortage of nearly 3,000 physicians by 2030. Most Kentucky counties — 107 of 120 — are designated as health professional shortage areas (HPSAs).
Stivers’ resolution includes $250,000 in the 2026-27 fiscal year from the state’s general fund for producing the report. Areas that the universities would be directed to study include a shortage of primary and specialty care physicians in medically underserved areas, the lack of access to physician care for medically underserved populations and how to retain physicians in medically underserved areas.
The universities’ report would be due Jan. 1, 2027.
Sen. Karen Berg, a Louisville Democrat who is also a doctor, praised the proposal and said Kentucky doctors should lead the training of “your best and your brightest” in order to keep them in the state.
“Where do we train them and how do we keep them?” Berg asked. “And that is an issue that I think we need to discuss in this legislature at some point because a lot of my colleagues do not feel that this legislature is friendly to physicians, and they leave because they have a lot of options.”
Another doctor on the committee, Nicholasville Republican Sen. Donald Douglas, said he agreed with Berg that this “really is something that we in the health care space need to get ahold of.” He added that his three children are specialists who chose to live outside Kentucky.
“I really appreciate my colleagues here in the General Assembly and how hard everybody is working to try to change the environment here in the commonwealth so that we can attract more physicians,” Douglas said. “But I’ve been speaking with a lot of my colleagues in the health care space recently a little bit louder, asking my colleagues to come along and be partners and work with us so that we can improve the environment.”
After the committee meeting, Stivers told the Lantern he had “no doubt” the study would lead to future legislation. He said lawmakers may need to consider changes around scholarships, loan repayments and the expedited naturalization process for foreign doctors who work in underserved areas.
(Editor’s note: SJR 116 passed out of the Senate March 9 and will now move to the House for consideration.)
