How Primary Care Is Faring Two Years into the COVID-19 Pandemic

Commonwealth Fund February 23, 2022
Celli Horstman, Corinne Lewis

Toplines

The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt serious blows to the U.S. primary care system. Many providers continue to face lower revenues, uncertainty around telehealth’s future, and burnout.

Experts are coalescing around policies to strengthen primary care including reforming how we pay and how much we pay for primary care, ensuring telehealth flexibilities last beyond the public health emergency, and building the workforce.

During national health emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic, a robust primary care system plays a critical role in triaging, testing, and educating patients. The U.S. primary care system was underprepared for the pandemic, largely because it had been weakened by chronic underinvestment and workforce shortages. In turn, our primary care system took massive blows from the pandemic: drops...

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