State university officials and medical organizations say they have a plan that's just what the doctor ordered to cure Indiana's physician shortage.

They hope to introduce legislation next year to increase the number of medical residencies, or graduate training positions, across the state. Indiana, like much of the country, faces a deficit of physicians in the coming years because of the aging population and increase in demand created by the Affordable Care Act.

While there are currently 1,500 medical residencies in Indiana, most are in Indianapolis. Advocates for the expansion note that doctors tend to stay in the area where they did their training, which would help overcome the dearth of physicians in urban and rural areas alike.

"Indiana is way behind other states in terms of residency positions," said Pat Bankston, associate dean of the medical school at Indiana University Northwest in Gary. "Indiana is deficient compared to the rest of the nation, and Northwest Indiana is deficient compared to the rest of the state."

If a medical student who was raised and educated in Indiana does her residency in the state, she is 20 percent more likely to stay here to practice, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Indiana ranks among the bottom third of states in the number of active physicians per 100,000 population. The state is said to need thousands of additional primary care doctors over the next few years to meet the growing demand for services.

To take on the physician shortage, IU recently increased the class sizes at its medical schools and Marian University in Indianapolis established an osteopathic-medicine college. But there soon won't be enough residency slots in the state for all the new graduates.According to IU, the state will be short 500 such slots by 2020.

Paul Evans, dean of the college of osteopathic medicine at Marian University, calls the situation a "train wreck moving slowly down the tracks."The elderly population is expected to double by 2020. Obesity and diabetes are at historically high rates. The Affordable Care Act is adding tens of millions of Americans to the insurance rolls.

WhileIU and Marian University project to have about 500 medical school graduates a year, there are less than 400 first-year residency slots available in the state, Evans noted.

"So what does that mean?" he asked. "It means IU and Marian are going to be training doctors for Ohio and Illinois and Michigan and New York because there aren't enough residency spots to keep the doctors in Indiana."

Read more:

Groups try to cure state's physician shortage