Across the health care system, in for-profit, non-profit and government primary care centers, the pressure is on primary care providers to use the same limited time and resources that they've always had to deliver preventive care, chronic care, acute care, evidence-based care and charitable care to an increasing number of patients, who bring with them increasing demands and expectations for medical care. As the US population ages and the prevalence of chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and hypertension increasing, the burden of proving patients with comprehensive management solutions to their health problems will also be greater.
One of the leading thinkers of primary care reform, Dr. Thomas Bodenheimer, a professor at the Center for Excellence in Primary Care in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, asked in his August 2006 New England Journal of Medicine Perspective editorial on the decline of primary care, "Who might support a national policy to rescue primary care?" Well…we kinda already have a lower-cost policy solution: Let the minorities do it.
Continue reading "Cotton-pickin' Primary Care: the growing reliance on a minority labor force." »