Family Physicians Perceptions

Bangor Family Physicians is a partner based medical group practice located in Maine. The practice consists of four family practice physicians, and a medical support staff. The medical support staff is made up of a practice manager, two receptionists, four nurses, two medical assistants, two billing clerks, and a laboratory technician. Additionally, Bangor Family Physicians employs a CPA to assist with taxes and financial advising. The key stakeholders are the four family physician partners, in which each physician holds an equal stake in the practice.

According to Health Resources and Services Administration If the system for providing primary care in 2020 were to stay fundamentally the same as today, there will be an estimated shortage of 20,400 primary care physicians ("Projecting the Supply and Demand for Primary Care Practitioners Through 2020," n.d.). In addition this projection doesn’t include the decreasing number of people perusing the medical degree and the baby boomers retiring form this filed of science. In the hand we are experiencing a significant increase in NPs and PAs. Considering this projected shortage, which is actually a very frightening situation the increasing number of NPs and PAs, can effectively be integrated; we could reduce the number of physician shortage by over 69 percent in 2020.

Providing care in primary care is less costly than a physician since since they tend

The United States has a significant “delivery of care” issue wherein physicians (and other HCPs) are concentrated in and around major cities and densely populated areas. This leaves rural populations with fewer physicians and more difficult access to care.

Another threat is the current state of rural hospitals nationwide. According to the case study, about 25% of Americans live in rural areas and only about 10% of physicians actually practice in rural areas. There is a 15% gap in the ratio of rural citizens to available practicing physicians. This is a threat to ELH’s need to attract and hire more physicians. In relation to rural hospitals, citizens have longer drive times to their medical facilities. This causes them to delay routine visits which subsequently exacerbates

Primary care is the backbone of many industrialized nations, but is the US one of them? Unfortunately, the answer is no. The US lags behind such developed nations in its accessibility of primary care by a huge difference. The United States healthcare system fails to ensure the timely preventative and primary care for its residents. The current estimates indicate that there is merely one physician for every 2,500 patients. Not only Medicare beneficiaries, but also privately insured adults struggle in accessing the right primary care physician at the right time. Moreover, maldistribution of physicians only exacerbates the problem, especially for those residing in health professional shortage areas (HPSA).15 Approximately, sixty-five million Americans live in designated primary care shortage areas.13 Such underserved population faces higher disease and death rates and health disparities that then result in higher rates of hospitalizations and emergency department visits—in other words, expensive medical bills.21 More governmental control on the geographic location of primary care physicians can be a first-step to fixing the shortage problem.

Even after half a decade there remains a shortage in primary care providers with only a reported one forth of medical school graduates seeking residencies in family practice, pediatrics, and obstetrics/gynecology. The FNP is a qualified clinically competent healthcare member that can fill this void in primary care in this cost-sensitive society. Despite barriers like the lack of third-party reimbursement, prescriptive authority, and hospital admission privileges the projected employment

Many physicians in family practice have solo practice settings and receive fees based on services. A study by Hunter et al (2004) showed that many family physicians opposed capitation and patient rosters because many believe that capitation will lead to loss of autonomy. The competition for patients may increase under capitated payment and physicians would move to less serviced areas to attract more patients under their team (Hunter et al., 2004). Another research from Cohen, Ferrier, Woodward, & Brown (2001), found that only five percentage of Ontario family physicians believed that primary care reform will have a positive effect on them. Many family physicians were concerned about changes in practice

The medical home concept is not new, as it is built on health care practice innovations that have arisen over the past 40 years (Kilo & Wasson, 2010). From these principles, a multitude of medical home projects and demonstrations across the United States have grown (PCPCC, 2011). Given the unique characteristics of each of the numerous projects promoting the PCMH model, it is difficult to obtain generalizable evidence of the effectiveness of the model (van Hasselt, et. al., 2015). However, the most fundamental aspect of the medical home model—the primary care provider – can be the source of the effective functioning of the model, and its direct benefit to the Medicare-eligible population. The role of primary care within a health care system has been tied to health services’ costs, with some evidence supporting the idea that health care delivery systems that place an emphasis on primary care have lower overall health costs (Starfield & Shi, 2004). Although the medical home model is not just about primary care, it places a priority on this type of care as a critical aspect of patient care. As a result, evidence of the success of primary care can carry through to the PCMH model.

Some of the challenges are that community-based, family-centered primary care do not have a medical emphasis, many hospitals do not prioritize disparities in health care because many feel they are conditions “beyond their control”, and health equity seems to only be specific to specialty groups as opposed to all within an organization (Healey et al., 2011). Although, we have improved in caring for people who gets sick or injured, it is still not enough and we must improve even more with increasing access and the quality of care (Healey et.al,

According to Freudenberg and Olden, one way to reduce the health disparities is by making the availability of primary care physicians better. (Buchbinder, 2012, p. 327) A primary care physician in the United States make less money than a specialist, so the amount of doctor's choosing to go in to primary care is significantly less than those who choose to enter a specialty. A primary care physician is like the captain at the head of a person's health they are in charge of screenings and counseling and to address the burden of chronic disease. In addition, which specialists if any are necessary to help manage the patient's disease if it is outside of the scope of practice for the primary care. Raising the amounts insurance pays to primary care

The main objective of this research question is to analyze the factors that led to the shortage of primary care physicians. The United States did not substantively address the primary care until the 1960s when two noteworthy reports characterized U.S. primary care. The decline in the number of general practitioners led to the evolution of primary care physicians in the past during the 1960s. Their role served many

Within the capitalistic economic structure that defines American commerce, the delivery of healthcare has largely shifted from an emphasis on public service to the pursuit of commoditized profit generation, but because good health is unlike any other product on the market the evolution of healthcare economics has been muddled by the advent of managed care. While the law of supply and demand reigns supreme in the exchange of traditional goods and services, emergency surgical procedures, prescription medications, and in-patient care are all provided through a relatively competition-free environment. The traditional model in which a Primary Care Physician (PCP) served the vast majority of his or her local community, providing the full spectrum of basic healthcare services from the delivery of infants to annual immunizations, precluded consumers from exercising that fundamental right guaranteed by capitalism: the ability to shop for the best deal. Despite the high costs associated with the microeconomics of the PCP model, Americans largely tolerated the proverbial monopolization of healthcare delivery because they invested a tremendous amount of trust in their PCPs, who in many small- to medium-sized towns developed lifelong relationships with patients, assisting their births, providing pediatric care, administering adult physical examinations, and even providing convalescent and end-of-life care to members of their community.

Families sometimes also lack the needed facilities (doctor offices, health departments, etc) and don’t always have access to safe or affordable transportation. Quality of care may be subpar simply because the patient and family can’t afford to follow up with the physician to ensure treatment is working and families can’t afford the increasingly skyrocketing costs of

United States health system is expensive in nature which causes many people avoid seeing a doctor. Besides that more attention has been focused on specialty care and less on the primary care. This system also suffers from geographic misdistribution that contributes to provider surplus in metropolitan and suburban areas and provider shortages in rural areas and inner cities. Shi L. & Singh D.A. (2013, p.87). The possible delay in providing patients with the required treatments caused by this kind of health care model increases the rate of mortality in the country.