Direct Primary Care Shows Limited Reach in Shortage Areas

Medscape November 26, 2024
Edited by Lora McGlade

TOPLINE:

Direct Primary Care (DPC) practices are less prevalent in health professional shortage areas (HPSAs) than are primary care physicians, with only 44% of DPC practices located in HPSAs and just 14% in high-priority need areas. DPC practices show higher presence in rural or partially rural HPSAs but lower representation in high-priority urban areas.

METHODOLOGY:

• Analysis included data from Health Resources and Services Administration, DPC Frontier Mapper, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, collected on October 9, 2023.
• Researchers compared 2125 DPC practices with 422,028 non-DPC primary care physicians across the United States, examining their distribution in HPSAs.
• Priority need scores for HPSAs were categorized as low (1-13), medium (14-17), and high (18-25), with additional stratification by rurality...

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