Q&A: Researcher discusses how buying primary care on the free market adds to doctor shortages

Medical Xpress June 24, 2025
Jake Miller, Harvard Medical School

Burned-out primary care physicians are increasingly seeking safe haven in concierge care and other free-market models of practice. This has resulted in an exodus from traditional primary care practices and exacerbated an already acute shortage of primary care physicians. These alternative models also give patients more personalized care and attention. But for the rest of people who get their primary care from traditional practices, the already pressing shortage of primary care doctors often gets worse.

But this evolution toward the free market has pros and cons for doctors and patients alike, highlighting an urgency to strengthen traditional forms of primary care, according to a recent perspective in NEJM, co-authored by Harvard Medical School researcher Zirui Song.

To find out what...

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