Medical Xpress March 22, 2021
People who have primary care physicians tend to have better health care, to receive timelier diagnoses and to get more prompt treatment when it is needed. So, it comes as small surprise that reliable access to primary care has been linked to better patient outcomes overall.
Now a new study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School offers further proof of the value of primary care by showing that increasing the number of primary care physicians could lead to boosts in life expectancy and result in fewer deaths in currently underserved areas across the United States.
The research, published March 23 in Annals of Internal Medicine, quantifies the effect of increasing the number of primary care physicians on population life...