Primary Care And The Looming Shortage

This is a trying time for primary care recruitment.  As the lifeblood of specialist referrals we are seeing less and less medical students staying with primary care as their chosen vocational endpoint.  Overworked, underpaid, and under-appreciated, more and more PCPs are leaving medicine or retraining in a fellowship even after being in practice for 10 or more years.  As the gatekeepers of cost control Medicare and the federal government fail to recognize the key aspects of having a strong primary care base in any market.  As a result many of the primary care physicians augment their practices with anti-aging medicine, lipsuction, aesthetics, and medical spa options.  This is hardly what they envisioned in medical school and residency.  Please read the attached article below to see what the real world often looks like for PCPs.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/25/harris.primary.care.doctor/index.html

Until next time...