Primary Care — Will It Survive?

The American College of Physicians recently warned that “primary care, the backbone of the nation's health care system, is at grave risk of collapse.”1 And indeed, primary care is facing a confluence of factors that could spell disaster. Patients are increasingly dissatisfied with their care and with the difficulty of gaining timely access to a primary care physician; many primary care physicians, in turn, are unhappy with their jobs, as they face a seemingly insurmountable task; the quality of care is uneven; reimbursement is inadequate; and fewer and fewer U.S. medical students are choosing to enter the field.The great . . .