Posted Monday, November 10th, 2008 -- 5:30 p.m.

Columbus: It may be a lot harder to get an appointment to see your doctor in the future especially if you live in a rural area.

A new study says there's a shortage of primary care physicians and it's getting worse.

"For a rural facility we're really lucky to have such a nice place." Dr. Anthony Callisto says only a handful of his medical school classmates were looking to be primary care physicians and very few were looking to work in rural areas like at the Columbus Community Hospital. "People are sub-specializing now, they don't want to do primary care such as internal medicine, emergency medicine, ObGyn, so it's very difficult to hire, especially in a big city-let alone a rural setting like this."

It's a problem for small hospitals and clinics all over the state. A new study by the Wisconsin Council on Medical Education and Workforce says the state is facing a shortage of nearly 400 primary care physicians.

"There continues to be a maldistribution of physicians in the state of Wisconsin. There are surplusses in urban areas, and shortages in rural and inner-city Wisconsin," says Dr. Carl Getto, a senior V.P. of Medical Affairs at UW Hospital.

And it will only get worse. "I think it's going to be a real problem in the future, especially for the small community hospitals and the rural hospitals," says Dr. Gary Galvin of Columbus Community Hospital. Galvin has been a general surgeon for nearly 20 years. He says the problem starts in med school, where students realize the prestige and money is not in primary care. "A lot of the physicians are being funnelled off into the sub-specialties so we have a general shortage of people interested in primary care."

Once they graduate, primary care doctors are then overworked. "These primary care providers are further asked to see just a couple more patients or see them just a little bit faster," says Dr. Tim Bartholow, of the Wisconsin Medical Society.

"Burnout is a concern," says Ed Harding, CEO of Columbus Community Hospital. He says they're not short now, but they've spent millions to make the place more attractive to recruits, and yet it still takes a while to fill some positions. "It's taken us over two years to recruit a new ObGyn."

The study says the state needs to do a better job of keeping our doctors here. Only 38% of graduates from Wisconsin's medical schools stay and practice in Wisconsin.