TRENDS
Primary Care’s Challenge Tomorrow’s primary care practice should feature multiple team members, closer collaboration with other providers, and a greater awareness and usage of community resources. How will it get from here to there?
Visits to primary care clinicians are declining, the workforce pipeline is shrinking as clinicians opt for more lucra-
tive fields, and many practices are struggling to remain open. Yet primary care is the only part of health care in which an increased supply is associated with better population health and more equitable outcomes.
“A strong foundation of primary care is critical to the health system,” conclude the authors of a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, “Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care.” It should be a common good, they say, made available to all individuals in the U.S., promoted by responsible public policy, and supported with the resources to achieve health equity. 34
July 2021
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The recommendations in the report echo those of a 1996 publication by the Institute of Medicine. But those recommendations “remain fallow,” the authors of the new report admit. “[Twenty-five] years since the Institute of Medicine report, ‘Primary Care: America’s Health in a New Era,’ this foundation remains weak and underresourced, accounting for 35% of health care visits while receiving only about 5% of health care expenditures. [T]he foundation is crumbling.”
