Primary Care for America August 30, 2024
The U.S. healthcare system has a pernicious problem: As a society, we don’t understand the value of primary care. As a result, it is at risk of extinction.
Instead of primary care, we’ve been conditioned to value tests and procedures, hospitals, and highly subspecialized care. The work of primary care is cognitively demanding and relational, grounded in prevention and wellbeing through better self-management. Yet less than 5% of U.S. healthcare dollars are spent on primary care, despite 50% of office visits being to a primary care physician. As a result, we find ourselves in a culture which both glorifies and highly compensates procedural specialties and hospital-based care, but undervalues the kind of care that could prevent those things.
This chronic...
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