Thinking Citizen Blog — “Primary Care Is In Crisis — Here’s How To Fix It” (Hugh Taylor, President, Mass Medical Society)
Thinking Citizen Blog: Thursday is Health, Health Care, and Global Health Policy Day
Today’s Topic: “Primary Care is in Crisis — Here’s How to Fix It” (Hugh Taylor, President, Mass Medical Society)
Is US health care spending completely out of whack? Is a good measure of how much the difference in the percentage of health care spending spent on primary care between the US (4.7%) and other developed countries (14%)? Or is that comparison misleading?
Today, excerpts from an article on the subject published recently in the Boston Globe. Plus some charts culled from the web. What is the best article you have read on the subject? Most revealing table or chart?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
“MORE THAN 40 PERCENT OF MASSACHUSETTS PATIENTS HAVE HAD DIFFICULTY ACCESSING HEALTH CARE AND 40 PERCENT WORRY ABOUT BEING ABLE TO AFFORD HEALTH CARE”
1, “A bill sponsored by state Senator Cindy Friedman, “An Act Relative to Primary Care for You,” would double primary care investment, allowing primary care practices to expand their patient services to integrate behavioural and addiction health services and upgrade technology required to optimize telehealth, and expand clinical hours.”
2. “Increased investments would reduce inequities in health care and shift the predominant model for primary care.”
3. “We urge the Legislature to pass this transformational bill to put the Commonwealth’s health care system on a path to recovery.”
“THE PRIMARY CARE WORKFORCE IS AGING”
1. “More than a third of primary care physicians in Massachusetts are age 69 or older and many are reducing their patient visit volume or retiring early largely due to to an unforgiving practice environment in which physicians spend more time tangling with insurance companies over referrals and reimbursements than face-to-face with patients.”
2. “Only about a quarter of students who graduate from Massachusetts medical schools intend to go into primary care, with many citing as reasons poor work-life balance, the feeling that primary care is not valued, and the considerably nigher administrative and care coordination burden coupled with lower compensation compared to the earning potential of a sub-specialist.”
“IN 2023, 22 PERCENT OF PHYSICIANS WHO GRADUATED FROM MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SCHOOLS WERE PRACTICING PRIMARY CARE SIX TO EIGHT YEARS AFTER GRADUATION”
1. “If these trends continue, we will not be able to replenish or grow the primary care workforce.”
2. “The pipeline of new PCPs cannot keep pace with those leaving primary care via retirement, to work in non-clinical settings, or for other reasons.”
3. “The United States should strongly consider allowing foreign students who train in the United States to remain and practice in the country upon completing their medical education and explore ways in which loan repayment options can be more practical for students who finance their medical education.”
NB: Is the estimate of the projected shortfall of primary care physicians in the graphic above remotely accurate?
Primary care is in crisis. Here’s how to fix it. — The Boston Globe
New Report Confirms Growing Shortage of Primary Care Physicians
AAMC Report Reinforces Mounting Physician Shortage
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the most interesting thing you learned in the last week related to health, health care or health care policy — the ethics, economics, politics, history….
Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to health are or health care policy that the rest of us may have missed.
Or just some random health-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make some one’s day. Or to cement in your mind something really important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you otherwise would about something that matters.
