The New Model of Practice in Family Medicine has been designed to improve patient care and alleviate financial and administrative pressures on family physicians.
A residency program director supports a shortened 2-year family medicine residency program that emphasizes primary care in the ambulatory setting and also allows family physicians to receive additional postgraduate training in their specialty areas of interest.
Marguerite Duane, MD, MHA and Robert L. Phillips, Jr., MD, MSPH
Two physicians argue in favor of extending residency training for family medicine physicians to 4 years so they will be adequately prepared to participate in family medicine's new model of care.
Utah's preventive care plan for the uninsured offers limited benefit for young healthy individuals but does not provide the necessary care for it's more chronically ill participants.
The Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine seeks candidates with an increased probability of practicing in rural Wisconsin, delivers the curriculum in collaboration with rural partners, and encourages students' interest in rural practice and living.
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.
Education debt is driving medical school graduates away from underserved communities and primary care, both of which our country will sorely need in the coming years.
Patients who have been encouraged to think of themselves as consumers and a medical system that is driven by individual demands rather than big-picture planning can undermine fairness in the distribution of vaccines.
No matter where your medical career takes you, you will most likely encounter patients facing barriers to accessing health care. Everyone needs to prepare to care for underserved patients.
Erwin C. Wang, MHA, Megan Prior, Jenny M. Van Kirk, Stephen A. Sarmiento, Margaret M. Burke, MS, Christine Oh, MS, Eileen S. Moore, MD, and Stephen Ray Mitchell, MD
Policies and systems are slow to resolve structural disparities in access to insurance coverage and health care, but physicians can act now.