Particularly in a small community, patients may want to avoid the social stigma of seeking mental health care by receiving it from their primary care physician—who may know them well enough to have some insights an unfamiliar specialist would not.

The physician who offers telemedicine services to out-of-state patients is subject to the laws of his or her home state and the remote patient’s state, so it is crucial to understand both.

Medical schools, along with state and federal governments, have an obligation to rectify the shortage of physicians in rural areas.

You are not just the rural patient’s doctor, you are the doctor for the football team, a friend, and perhaps a relative; you speak on health at local schools and are expected to attend fundraisers.

Though high-tech specialties tend to be considered more prestigious—partly because they've led to great advances in patient care—primary care offers not only the opportunity to do work that society needs but also the intrinsic reward of face-to-face patient care.

A foreign medical graduate's experience practicing psychiatry in rural America.

The U.S. federal and state governments are taking steps to ameliorate the physician shortage by offering scholarship and loan-repayment options to medical students interested in primary care practice in designated underserved areas.

Physicians who choose rural practice are called upon to deliver care that they have limited experience with, most notably in emergency situations when they are the most skilled people around.

Health care rationing—the controlled distribution of resources, goods, or services in short supply—has elicited extreme rhetoric and aroused much fear.

If I am unwilling to pay more taxes so an 85-year-old stranger can have a left-ventricular assist device, then I am morally obligated to say the same holds true for a future version of me in those same circumstances.