Primary Care Policy Summary

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Recommended: A synopsis of patient centered medical homes

The first policy solution indirectly addresses the issue of the supply gap by targeting efforts into changing how primary care services are provided and reimbursed. This policy typically revolves around the creation of patient-centered medical homes (PCMH), organizations that deliver primary care using a team of providers, including healthcare professionals such as physicians, PAs, NPs, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, educators, and care coordinators (Auerbach 2013a). The major reason that changing primary care delivery models to one run by PCMHs would help diminish the primary care shortage is because PCMHs would be functioning to reduce supply shortages by having numerous healthcare professionals available to coordinate and provide primary …show more content…

Due to the complexity of such a delivery system, added expenses would be required with the addition of providers to the primary care delivery team. However, these costs are not inherently ones that will add to the healthcare cost crisis as a team of coordinated providers will allow for easier access to preventative services, less wasteful utilization of treatments and testing, and in the future, better health outcomes for patients which will keep them from needing expensive specialty and emergency care in the future. PAs, NPs, and pharmacists can be utilized dynamically as health coaches or as primary care providers, educating patients on how to manage their lifestyle to prevent and handle acute and chronic conditions, change behavioral habits impacting their health, and improve prescription adherence, while alleviating some of the task burden placed on PCPs (Bodenheimer 2013). Consequently, by grouping healthcare professionals, the PCMH allows for an even stronger coordination of primary care and thereby decreases the overall demand for …show more content…

Specifically, performance of primary care tasks is limited by laws and regulations that dictate what type of services non-physicians can complete. Due to the fact that altering these statutes is incredibly difficult, if non-physicians are adequately trained in primary care services within graduate school programs, health care organizations may be able to get around these laws by reallocating responsibilities without having to change statutes. Another limitation to using this policy to alleviate the primary care shortage is that non-physicians will have to be trained to complete primary care services and it will therefore take time to learn and find programs that can provide the necessary training to non-clinicians. Lastly, it is clear that having non-clinicians substitute in for PCPs will help alleviate the nation’s PCP shortage and provide clear cut benefits to primary care clinicians by reallocating the work they currently do. However, it is less clear if having different providers working to fill in for clinicians will be met with reluctance on the end of the patient. Patients may lose some freedom in choosing which providers perform services and may not feel as though the care provided by a PA or NP is on the same level of quality as that provided by a doctor,

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