Together we can save primary care
Community members, we need you to help save primary care.
Learn about pressing issues and provide your feedback.
Primary Care is under threat
Primary care is under threat. Fewer young people are choosing to enter the field and burnout among current clinicians is high. This is coupled with being underfunded and supported by a payment model that prioritizes the number of patient visits rather than the value of care. Additionally, fewer patients are using primary care. Read more about the primary care crisis in this Boston Globe article. As a community member and patient, you can help us save primary care by sharing your stories and feedback on how to strengthen primary care.
Your story is powerful
Did your relationship with your primary care physician, physician assistant, or nurse practitioner help you in some important way? Did counseling, tests, or treatment provided by your primary care team improve your health? Was your primary care team able to help you find resources for adequate housing or healthy food? We want to hear your personal story.
We will use submissions to identify priorities and provide real testimonials for articles and research. This information may be shared with policy-makers to help inform their decision-making in support of primary care investment.
With additional support, primary care could:
Improve access for urgent care needs
This includes walk-in, same-day appointments and extended hours. Urgent care is for minor illnesses and injuries that do not require emergency care such as minor burns, cuts requiring stitches, and cold-like symptoms.
Offer integrated behavioral health services
Some primary care clinicians are already providing behavioral health services in their practice, but it isn't meeting the increasing demand. This can be addressed by making social workers available to patients in the primary care practice.
Add health coaches
Health coaches can help you develop plans for health goals such as healthy eating, quitting smoking, or reducing stress.
Provide more care in your home
Clinicians could add primary care home visits and the ability to use at-home devices that automatically send information to your primary care office. For example, a device that checks your blood pressure and notifies your primary care team when it detects something concerning.
Provide treatment for people with opioid-use disorder
Increased access to life-saving medications for people with opioid-use disorder.
Improve interpreter services
Increased or improved access to medical interpreter services means that more people are able to receive equitable care.
Add Nurse care managers
Nurse care managers help coordinate care by helping patients navigate the health care system to find the care they need.
Add community health workers
Community health workers can help address social issues that interfere with health such as a lack of food or safe housing.
Increase options for virtual visits and telehealth
Make technology more accessible and increase the options for virtual care.
Create patient advisory groups
These groups of patients would advise the primary care office on what is and isn’t working.
Strengthen relationships with primary care teams
Improve the ability to reach someone you know and trust when you're sick, get an appointment with a member of your primary care team, to easily access your team via text, email, or telephone; and to spend more time with your primary care clinician when you need them.
What means the most to you?
Fill out our survey to tell our team how you would like to see primary care strengthened. We welcome input from everyone regardless of their relationship to the health care field.
Links to more information
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“Nearly 1 in 3 patients don't see primary care doc”
Article via Axios -
“Why you can’t get in to see your primary care doctor. ‘It’s almost frightening.’”
Article via Boston Globe - “Primary Care Matters”
Webpage via California Health Care Foundation - “Engaging Primary Care in Value-Based Payment: New Findings from the 2022 Commonwealth Fund Survey of Primary Care Physicians”
Survey via The Commonwealth Fund - “Primary Care in Peril: How Clinicians View the Problems and Solutions”
Article via NEJM Catalyst