Medical schools and residency training programs push trainees away from primary care and make primary care seem less prestigious. Medicare is the largest payer of graduate medical education, so Medicare could require additional outpatient primary care training in residency to encourage Family and Internal Medicine trainees to enter outpatient primary care, where the need is critical.
Not everyone who visits an urgent care will seek primary care services, but the ability for clinics to provide PCP services on an as-needed basis is a massive value-add for all stakeholders - be it providers seeking to bolster their financial positions or patients who are suffering from provider shortages in primary care.
Finding the best analytics tools for health care revenue management can revolutionize operational processes. Compare the leading software options to discover helpful team resources.
Integrating pharmacists into primary care teams could be a key way to address the primary care physician shortage, according to a new report. The pandemic made it clear that pharmacists are clinically trained and want to provide care beyond filling prescriptions, the report said.
Prior to the pandemic, about half of U.S. states had given nurse practitioners full practice authority. Since then, even more states have issued executive orders to allow NPs to take on more responsibility during the pandemic – an emergency response put in place to help address new challenges.
While countless online practice-improvement resources exist, there is an acute need for help in safety-net primary care, especially as the U.S. healthcare industry slowly shifts away from fee-for-service to outcomes-based care. That is the idea behind the new Primary Care Information Network.
One of the hopes embedded in the health law was to expand the role of nurse practitioners and physician assistants in addressing the nation’s shortage of primary care providers. But a new study questions whether that’s actually happening in doctors’ offices. Of the more than 4 million procedures office-based nurse practitioners and physician assistants independently […]
Discover what tools are essential for efficient, safe surgical extractions in today’s health care landscape, from elevators to forceps and beyond.
For years, experts have predicted a physician shortage, especially in the primary care fields. Little has been done to increase the number of physicians choosing to pursue these specialties or increase the number of doctors to fill the gap. Rather, some are calling for mid-level providers to step up and fill this deficiency. While mid-levels […]
In the United States, there’s a primary care shortage and an uneven geographic distribution of those physicians across the country. The average wait time to see a physician in the United States, according to Merritt Hawkins, is 18.5 days. If you live in Boston, your wait could be closer to 70 days. In January, the U.S. […]