Coming up short

When his wife developed what appeared to be arthritis, with pain so severe she could barely move, longtime Arthritis Foundation volunteer Gene Overfelt found he couldn't get her in to see a specialist for more than two months.

Using his connections, he was able to cut the waiting time to six weeks.

Lindsey Crawford was told she'd have to wait nearly three months for a routine gynecological exam.

Victoria Saley spent two years trying to get a diagnosis for painful joint inflammation. When she was 20, doctors told her she had a rheumatoid disease in which joint inflammation turns cartilage to bone, fusing it together.

Now 24, she waited a long time for her initial assessment with a rheumatologist. And she had to wait nine more weeks when she switched to a doctor closer to her home.

Crawford, Saley and the Overfelts are caught in a state health-care crisis that experts say will only get worse. Other signs of Utah's growing shortage of health-care providers:

• Some patients don't get respiratory care in a hospital because they don't need it quite as desperately as others — there aren't enough respiratory therapists to care for all patients who need them.

• The director of the area's only burn unit predicts that even a moderate industrial accident resulting in burns could overwhelm the entire region's ability to provide burn care.

• Utah hospitals report having trouble recruiting anesthesiologists, X-ray technicians, medical technologists and other support staff.

• Utah has long had fewer pharmacists per capita than most states; now the supply is dwindling even further.

• Nurses can pretty much write their own ticket. A quick glance at job postings online for University of Utah Health Sciences Center and Intermountain Health Care's numerous hospitals shows scores of nursing openings.

A BYU study released earlier this year found that the nursing shortage had spread to the military.

And a national report issued this month says that about 25 percent of the medical errors that occur in hospitals can be traced to a lack of nurses.

Utahns have been lucky compared with much of the nation. Most don't have to leave the state to find health-care specialists when they need them. In fact, Utah is a medical destination for people living in Wyoming, Idaho and other neighboring states.