ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – New Mexico is facing a shortage of healthcare providers, and it seems it’s only getting worse. State leaders say they are doing what they can to fix this. 

New Mexico Health Department leaders are looking to our neighbors in Texas and Arizona, and they’re trying to use the political divide to their advantage.

“We need more of everything everywhere,” said Patrick Allen, a New Mexico Health Department secretary.  

Allen is no stranger to our state’s crippling shortage of healthcare providers.

“I’ve had the same experience, I’m sure you and many of your viewers have of you have an appointment, need to get an appointment or reschedule one. And you’re out two or three months to be able to get in with somebody,” said Allen.

According to the Cicero Institute, New Mexico’s doctor-to-patient ratio is 16% worse than the national average.

The institute estimates our state will need at least 2,000 more doctors to keep up with demand by 2030. Allen says enrolling more New Mexicans in medical school just won’t cut it.

“We’re always looking for any advantage that we can get to try to recruit providers from elsewhere,” Allen said. 

That’s why billboards are going up in major cities throughout Texas and Arizona, saying “Come to New Mexico where you are free to provide.”

“There are some states that have just given us this golden opportunity to talk to their providers and say, you know, we provide an atmosphere that’s free of a lot of the risk and uncertainty you face in Texas or elsewhere,” said Allen. 

He’s talking about new laws criminalizing abortion and restricting other reproductive health procedures. All things New Mexico’s state lawmakers explicitly protected in law.

“We think this goes to family care, emergency practice, OBGYN’s, a whole bunch of different kinds of practitioners, we think, have got this cloud now that they have to deal with, and we want to let them know that it doesn’t exist in New Mexico,” Allen said. 

The state paid $350,000 for the month-long campaign. Allen says they’ll be ready to expand to other states if it works.

“We’ve gathered some anecdotal kinds of evidence that there’s an interest, and we’ve certainly seen stories of different kinds of practitioners over the last several months to a year moving to New Mexico. So we think this is really an opportunity to test out whether marketing will work from that standpoint,” said Allen. 

Now, you may be thinking it’s a little petty to try and steal doctors from other states. But, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an estimated 14,000 Texans traveled to New Mexico last year to receive an abortion, putting an extra strain on our reproductive healthcare system.

You may also remember the Dallas Independent School District put up a billboard in Albuquerque a few years ago, trying recruiting New Mexican teachers to jump ship for Texas.

So it does seem fair is fair when it comes to addressing critical workforce shortages.