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Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
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Summary

Primary care is the provision of integrated, accessible health care services by clinicians who are accountable for addressing a large majority of personal health care needs, developing a sustained partnership with patients, and practicing in the context of family and community. To bring this vision of the future of primary care closer to reality, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) appointed an expert committee to carry out a two-year study intended to address the opportunities for and challenges of reorienting health care in the United States. The above definition (published in the committee's interim report in 1994) guided its deliberations and its consideration of the conclusions and recommendations offered in the main part of this report (see Box S-1). Specifically, the report

  • gives a clear definition of the function of primary care that can guide public and private actions to improve health care;
  • encourages certain organizational arrangements for health care, built on a foundation of strong primary care, that will facilitate the coordination of the full array of services that are essential for maintaining and improving the health status of patients;
  • argues for development and dissemination of improved information systems and quality assurance programs for primary care;
  • advocates development and sustained support of means to make primary care available to all Americans, regardless of economic status, geographic location, or language and cultural differences;
Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
×
  • suggests financing mechanisms that encourage good primary care rather than episodic interventions late in the disease process;
  • encourages support for training of a primary care workforce, sufficient in numbers to meet the needs for primary care, equipped with the skills and competencies that match the function as the committee has defined it, and prepared to work in the context of a team that includes primary care physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, community health workers, and other health professionals;
  • favors enhancement of the knowledge base for primary care based on clinical and health services research; and
  • speaks to the development of primary care as a continually improving system in an era of rapid change through program evaluations, dissemination of innovations, and continued education of the clinician and patient.

The chapters of this report constitute a road map for reaching the committee's goals, as reflected in five assumptions. First, primary care is the logical foundation of an effective health care system because primary care can address the large majority of the health problems present in the population. Second, primary care is essential to achieving the objectives that together constitute value in health care—quality of care (including achievement of desired health outcomes), patient satisfaction, and efficient use of resources. Third, personal interactions that include trust and partnership between patients and clinicians are central to primary care. Fourth, primary care is an important instrument for achieving stronger emphasis on (a) health promotion and disease prevention and (b) care of the chronically ill, especially among the elderly with multiple problems. Fifth, the trend toward integrated health care systems in a managed care environment will continue and will provide both opportunities and challenges for primary care.

Definition Of Primary Care

The committee's definition of primary care (see Chapter 2), which the committee formally recommends be adopted (see Box S-1), is presented in terms of the function of primary care, not solely in terms of who provides it. The definition calls attention to several attributes that provide the structure within which the broad themes of this report are addressed. The critical elements include

  • integrated and accessible health care services;
  • services provided by primary care clinicians—generally considered to be physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants—but involving a broader array of individuals in a primary care team;
  • accountability of clinicians and systems for quality of care, patient satisfaction, efficient use of resources, and ethical behavior;
Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
×
  • the majority of personal health care needs, which include physical, mental, emotional, and social concerns;
  • a sustained partnership between patients and clinicians; and
  • primary care in the context of family and community.

Value Of Primary Care

The committee's case for primary care (see Chapter 3) is made in two ways. The first concerns the value of primary care for individuals. The committee uses fictional scenarios to illustrate the terms in the definition and argues that primary care (a) provides a place to which patients can bring a wide range of health problems; (b) guides patients through the health system; (c) facilitates ongoing relationships between patients and clinicians within which patients participate in decisionmaking about their health and health care; (d) opens opportunities for disease prevention and health promotion as well as early detection of disease; and (e) builds bridges between personal health care and patients' families and communities.

The second way to approach the question of the value of primary care is by recourse to empirical evidence. The committee amasses considerable evidence that primary care improves the quality and efficiency of care and expands access to appropriate services; it also forms an important bridge between personal health care and public health, to the advantage of both.

The Nature Of Primary Care

The complexity of primary care is reflected in six core attributes explored in Chapter 4 of the report:

  1. Excellent primary care is grounded in both the biomedical and the social sciences.
  2. Clinical decisionmaking in primary care differs from that in specialty care.
  3. Primary care has at its core a sustained personal relationship between patient and clinician.
  4. Primary care does not consider mental health separately from physical health.
  5. Important opportunities to promote health and prevent disease are intrinsic to primary care practice.
  6. Primary care is information intensive.

In the committee's view, no health care system can be complete without primary care. In the United States, the time is right for primary care to undergo more systematic and creative development and to expand as the foundation of

Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
×

health care delivery. It is amenable to improvement through methods of science, implementation of key supporting elements of the health care infrastructure, and use of relevant management and organizational principles. Much of the remainder of the report explores these points in more detail.

The Delivery Of Primary Care

The features of the U.S. health care scene that will influence the extent to which primary care evolves in this country are myriad: the spread of managed care, the expansion of integrated health care delivery systems, the consolidation of health plans and systems, growth in for-profit ownership of health plans and integrated delivery systems, the diversity among and within health care markets, the special challenges of primary care in rural areas and for the urban poor, the need for primary care to coordinate with other types of services, current and evolving roles for health care professionals, and the role of academic health centers in primary care delivery.

Key aspects of these trends and themes are explored in Chapter 5. Based on its analysis of these topics, the committee arrived at a series of recommendations concerning actions it believes would be necessary to overcome the barriers, or exploit the advantages, that these above factors pose for full implementation of the committee's vision of primary care. In all, the committee advances 11 separate recommendations in Chapter 5 (see Box S-1). The first group concerns the financing of primary care services, and the committee makes a strong statement about the availability of the services of a primary care clinician and the need for health care coverage for all Americans. Another recommendation concerns the organization of primary care and emphasizes the importance of the primary care team. With respect to underserved populations, the committee returned to its earlier themes to underscore the importance of primary care for populations who have special health care needs or who are traditionally underserved. Another major thesis of this chapter is the need for primary care to develop strong relationships with three other types of health activities—public health, mental health, and long-term care—and the committee offers three specific recommendations intended to reinforce the coordination and collaboration of efforts in these areas. Another recommendation calls for specific steps to develop tools and approaches for monitoring and improving the quality of primary care and to make performance information available to a wide audience. The final recommendation concerning the delivery of primary care calls on academic health centers to make primary care a core element of their mission and to provide leadership in education, research, and service delivery related to primary care.

The Primary Care Workforce

The committee concludes in Chapter 6 that the nation probably has a slight

Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
×

shortage, overall, in supply of the principal types of primary care clinicians—physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants—but it underscores the great difficulties of developing reliable and valid estimates of supply of and, especially, requirements for clinicians or clinicians' services. The committee states four recommendations concerning important directions for the production and use of primary care clinicians (see Box S-1). These involve: (1) continuing the current level of effort to increase the supply of primary care clinicians but ensuring that primary care training programs and delivery systems focus their efforts on improving the competency of primary care clinicians and on increasing access for populations not now receiving adequate primary care; (2) encouraging state and federal agencies to monitor carefully the supply of and requirements for primary care clinicians; (3) exploring ways in which managed care and integrated health care systems might be used to alleviate the geographic maldistribution of primary care clinicians; and (4) examining how state practice acts for nurse practitioners and physician assistants might be amended to eliminate outmoded restrictions on practices that currently impede efficient and effective functioning of primary care teams and access to needed health care.

Education And Training For Primary Care

If primary care is to move in the directions advocated by this committee, then many aspects of health professions education and training will need to be restructured. Chapter 7 explores the changes likely to be required in undergraduate and graduate training, argues that clinical training ought to involve multidisciplinary team practice, and examines issues of retraining physicians for primary care. The committee used the broad scope of primary care to suggest that all trainees should be equipped to practice competently in the following areas: periodic assessment of asymptomatic persons; screening and early disease detection; evaluation and management of acute illness; assessment and either management or referral of patients with more complex problems that call for the diagnostic and therapeutic tools of medical specialists and other professionals; ongoing management of patients with established chronic diseases; coordination of care among specialists; and provision of acute hospital and long-term care.

To reach this goal, the committee puts forward several recommendations (see Box S-1). With respect to undergraduate medical education, the committee is concerned about students gaining experience in primary care settings; with respect to graduate training, the committee explores issues of residency programs in family practice, internal medicine, and pediatrics. More broadly, the committee examines questions of advanced training for all primary care clinicians and calls attention to the need to develop a set of common core competencies for all primary care clinicians. In addition, the committee highlights its concerns about two special areas of emphasis—communication skills and cultural sensitivity. A major concern for the committee is financial support for primary care training,

Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
×

and consistent with earlier recommendations about universal coverage for health care, the committee calls for an all-payer system to support health professions education and training, with some of this support reserved for primary care and directed to training in nonhospital sites such as offices, clinics, and extended care facilities. Other elements of education and training include developing more innovative and interdisciplinary training programs and creating mechanisms by which physicians can be formally retrained for primary care.

Research And Evaluation In Primary Care

Despite the committee's clear vision for the future of primary care and the consensus it reached on many steps toward bringing that vision to fruition, the committee still acknowledges that primary care represents a largely uncharted frontier awaiting discovery and exploration. Expanded research in this area is timely because of the accelerating movement toward a variety of managed care and integrated delivery systems, most of which will rely on primary care models and clinicians. To the degree that this is so, improved primary care that can bring about a better balance between patients' and populations' needs and the health care services they receive is critical.

As noted in Chapter 8, the science base for primary care is modest, and the infrastructure underlying the knowledge base is skeletal at best. Thus, the committee proposes four recommendations intended to strengthen the underpinnings of a primary care research enterprise (see Box S-1). These relate to (1) federal support for primary care research, including the designation of a lead agency in this effort; (2) development of a national database on primary care, ideally through some form of ongoing survey mechanism; (3) support of research through practice-based primary care research networks; and (4) development of standards for data collection, including attention to data element definition and improved coding.

The committee also identified a number of subjects that it believes warrant high priority in any primary care research agenda. Prominent among these is the committee's fifth recommendation in Chapter 8 concerning specialist provision of primary care. Other subjects involve major elements of the committee's conceptualization of primary care, such as the large majority of personal health care needs, the sustained partnership between clinicians and patients, accountability, and practicing in a family and community context.

A Strategy For Implementation

The recommendations described so far are regarded by the committee as essential steps toward strengthening primary care as the firm foundation for health care in this country, but only effective implementation will permit the nation to realize their benefits. To provide focus for the implementation effort,

Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
×

Chapter 9 of the report discusses specific means for implementation and identifies the many parties whose commitment will be necessary. This plan for implementation is guided by several perspectives that, in the view of the committee, are essential for success: the need for a coordinated strategy, a long-term perspective, and involvement of a large set of change agents and interested parties.

Coordinated implementation by many participants over time is unlikely to take place unless an entity exists whose purposes are to build appropriate coalitions, stimulate action, and monitor and facilitate implementation. To this end, the committee recommends the formation of a public-private, nonprofit primary care consortium (see Box S-1). Its broad functions would be (among other things) to

  • coordinate efforts to promote and enhance primary care;
  • conduct research and development projects, provide technical assistance, and disseminate information on issues such as primary care infrastructure, innovative models of primary care, and methods to monitor primary care performance; and
  • organize national meetings through which interested parties can report on progress in implementing the primary care agenda.

The committee's view of this entity as a public-private partnership was arrived at advisedly. Government at all levels has a deep interest in seeing the primary care vision of this committee succeed, but many aspects of the strategy proposed in this report require action and commitment by many entities in the private sector.

With the apparent demise of comprehensive national health care reform, the climate for moving ahead on a reform agenda affecting primary care might seem to be unfavorable. Yet, the pace of change in the health care systems of communities around the country remains very rapid. In those changes and the restructuring being proposed for Medicare and Medicaid, opportunities exist to make the American health care system more effective and efficient. Important parts of the agenda proposed in this report require federal action, but for many elements the key decisionmakers are to be found in the states and cities of this country, in health care plans, in educational institutions, in professions, and in private foundations. Many of these parties are already committed to a renewed emphasis on primary care. In this situation, opportunities for coalition building for implementation should be present, and that is one reason the committee has recommended establishment of a primary care consortium.

This is a time when creative effort and collaboration can influence the forces driving health care change in the directions defined by this committee. It will not be a time for weak hearts or quick fixes—but the promise of improving health care for Americans should be motivation enough to stay the course set out in this report.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
×

BOX S-1 Committee Recommendations

Chapter 2

2.1 To Adopt the Committee's Definition

This committee has defined primary care as the provision of integrated, accessible health care services by clinicians who are accountable for addressing a large majority of personal health care needs, developing a sustained partnership with patients, and practicing in the context of family and community. The committee recommends the adoption of this definition by all parties involved in the delivery and financing of primary care and by institutions responsible for the education and training of primary care clinicians.

Chapter 5

5.1 Availability of Primary Care for All Americans

The committee recommends development of primary care delivery systems that will make the services of a primary care clinician available to all Americans.

5.2 Health Care Coverage for All Americans

To assure that the benefits of primary care are more uniformly available, the committee recommends that the federal government and the states develop strategies to provide health care coverage for all Americans.

5.3 Payment Methods Favorable to Primary Care

The committee recommends that payment methods favorable to the support of primary care be more widely adopted.

5.4 Payment for Primary Care Services

The committee recommends that when fee-for-service is used to reimburse clinicians for patient care, payments for primary care be upgraded to reflect better the value of these services.

5.5 Practice by Interdisciplinary Teams

The committee believes that the quality, efficiency, and responsiveness of primary care are enhanced by the use of interdisciplinary teams and recommends the adoption of the team concept of primary care wherever feasible.

5.6 The Underserved and Those with Special Needs

The committee recommends that public or private programs designed to cover underserved populations and those with special needs include the provision of primary care services as defined in this report. It further recommends that the agencies or organizations funding these programs carefully monitor them to ensure that such primary care is provided.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
×

5.7 Primary Care and Public Health

The committee recommends that health care plans and public health agencies develop specific written agreements regarding their respective roles and relationships in (a) maintaining and improving the health of the communities they serve and (b) ensuring coordination of preventive services and health promotion activities related to primary care.

5.8 Primary Care and Mental Health Services

The committee recommends the reduction of financial and organizational disincentives for the expanded role of primary care in the provision of mental health services. It further recommends the development and evaluation of collaborative care models that integrate primary care and mental health services more effectively. These models should involve both primary care clinicians and mental health professionals.

5.9 Primary Care and Long-Term Care

To improve the continuity and effectiveness of services for those requiring long-term care, the committee recommends that third-party payers (including Medicare and Medicaid), health care organizations, and health professionals promote the integration of primary care and long-term care by coordinating or pooling financing and removing regulatory or other barriers to such coordination.

5.10 Quality of Primary Care

The committee recommends the development and adoption of uniform methods and measures to monitor the performance of health care systems and individual clinicians in delivering primary care as defined in this report. Performance measures should include cost, quality, access, and patient and clinician satisfaction. The results should be made available to public and private purchasers of care, provider organizations, clinicians, and the general public.

5.11 Primary Care in Academic Health Centers

The committee recommends that academic health centers explicitly accept primary care as one of their core missions and provide leadership in the development of primary care teaching, research, and service delivery programs.

Chapter 6

6.1 Programs Regarding the Primary Care Workforce

The committee recommends (a) that the current level of effort to increase the supply of primary care clinicians be continued and (b) that these primary care training programs and delivery systems focus their efforts on improving the competency of primary care clinicians and on increasing access for populations not now receiving adequate primary care.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
×

6.2 Monitoring the Primary Care Workforce

The committee recommends that state and federal agencies carefully monitor the supply of and requirements for primary care clinicians.

6.3 Addressing Issues of Geographic Maldistribution

The committee recommends that federal and state governments and private foundations fund research projects to explore ways in which managed care and integrated health care systems can be used to alleviate the geographic maldistribution of primary care clinicians.

6.4 State Practice Acts for Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants

The committee recommends that state governments review current restrictions on the scope of practice of primary care nurse practitioners and physician assistants and eliminate or modify those restrictions that impede collaborative practice and reduce access to quality primary care.

Chapter 7

7.1 Training in Primary Care Sites

All medical schools should require their undergraduate medical students to experience training in settings that deliver primary care as defined by this committee.

7.2 Common Core Competencies

The committee recommends that common core competencies for primary care clinicians, regardless of their disciplinary base, be defined by a coalition of appropriate educational and professional organizations and accrediting bodies.

7.3 Emphasis on Common Core Competencies by Accrediting and Certifying Bodies

The committee recommends that organizations that accredit primary care training programs and certify individual trainees support curricular reforms that teach the common core competencies and essential elements of primary care.

7.4 Special Areas of Emphasis in Primary Care Training

The committee recommends that the curricula of all primary care education and training programs emphasize communication skills and cultural sensitivity.

7.5 All-Payer Support for Primary Care Training

The committee recommends the development of an all-payer system to support health professions education and training. A portion of this pool of funds should be reserved for education and training in primary care.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
×

7.6 Support for Graduate Medical Education in Primary Care Sites

The committee recommends that a portion of the funds for graduate medical education be reallocated to provide explicit support for the direct and overhead costs of primary care training in nonhospital sites such as health maintenance organizations, community clinics, physician offices, and extended care facilities.

7.7 Interdisciplinary Training

The committee recommends that (a) the training of primary care clinicians include experience with the delivery of health care by interdisciplinary teams; and (b) academic health centers work with health maintenance organizations, group practices, community health centers, and other health care delivery organizations using interdisciplinary teams to develop clinical rotations for students and residents.

7.8 Experimentation and Evaluation

The committee recommends that private foundations, health plans, and government agencies support ongoing experimentation and evaluation of interdisciplinary teaching of collaborative primary care to determine how such teaching might best be done.

7.9 Retraining

The committee recommends that (a) curricula of retraining programs in primary care include instruction in the core competencies proposed for development in Recommendations 7.2 and 7.3 and (b) certifying bodies in the primary care disciplines develop mechanisms for testing and certifying clinicians who have undergone retraining for primary care.

Chapter 8

8.1 Federal Support for Primary Care Research

The committee recommends that (a) the Department of Health and Human Services identify a lead agency for primary care research and (b) the Congress of the United States appropriate funds for this agency in an amount adequate to build both the infrastructure required to conduct primary care research and fund high-priority research projects.

8.2 National Database and Primary Care Data Set

The committee recommends that the Department of Health and Human Services support the development of and provide ongoing support for a national database (based on a sample survey) that reflects the majority of health care needs in the United States and includes a uniform primary care data set based on episodes of care. This national survey should capture data on the entire U.S. population, regardless of insurance status.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
×

8.3 Research in Practice-Based Primary Care Research Networks

The committee recommends that the Department of Health and Human Services provide adequate and stable financial support to practice-based primary care research networks.

8.4 Data Standards

The committee recommends that the federal government foster the development of standards for data collection that will ensure the consistency of data elements and definitions of terms, improve coding, permit analysis of episodes of care, and reflect the content of primary care.

8.5 Study of Specialist Provision of Primary Care

The committee recommends that the appropriate federal agencies and private foundations commission studies of (a) the extent to which primary care, as defined by the IOM, is delivered by physician specialists and subspecialists, (b) the impact of such care delivery on primary care workforce requirements, and (c) the effects of these patterns of health care delivery or such care on the costs and quality of and access to health care.

Chapter 9

9.1 Establishment of a Primary Care Consortium

The committee recommends the formation of a public-private, nonprofit primary care consortium consisting of professional societies, private foundations, government agencies, health care organizations, and representatives of the public.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." Institute of Medicine. 1996. Primary Care: America's Health in a New Era. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5152.
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Ask for a definition of primary care, and you are likely to hear as many answers as there are health care professionals in your survey. Primary Care fills this gap with a detailed definition already adopted by professional organizations and praised at recent conferences. This volume makes recommendations for improving primary care, building its organization, financing, infrastructure, and knowledge base—as well as developing a way of thinking and acting for primary care clinicians. Are there enough primary care doctors? Are they merely gatekeepers? Is the traditional relationship between patient and doctor outmoded? The committee draws conclusions about these and other controversies in a comprehensive and up-to-date discussion that covers:

  • The scope of primary care.
  • Its philosophical underpinnings.
  • Its value to the patient and the community.
  • Its impact on cost, access, and quality.

This volume discusses the needs of special populations, the role of the capitation method of payment, and more. Recommendations are offered for achieving a more multidisciplinary education for primary care clinicians. Research priorities are identified. Primary Care provides a forward-thinking view of primary care as it should be practiced in the new integrated health care delivery systems—important to health care clinicians and those who train and employ them, policymakers at all levels, health care managers, payers, and interested individuals.

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