Helping Primary Care NOW!

[Abe Young]

Kind Folks,

Happy summer! (what's left of it)  Just wanted to share a post I just put onto DownstateCafe.blogspot.com .  It's about how everyone in the medical profession, including med students, has the unique power to use their voice right now to influence these upcoming health reforms (hopefully).  In this case specifically, it has to do with the valuation of primary care, so I thought I'd definitely pass it along to this listserve.

Hope you're well!
-Abe

Helping Primary Care NOW!

In regards to a proposed 8 percent increase in reimbursement rates to primary care physicians in the 2010 Medicare fee schedule, an email from the American Academy of Family Physicians notified me that "As you would expect, the subspecialists are mobilizing their members to oppose this change."
Below is the "comment" I left at the Regulations.gov webpage to show my support, and if you believe so too, you can do so too here.

I am happy/relieved to hear of this proposed 8% increase in Medicare reimbursement rates to primary care physicians. Happy because it is the first I have learned of an indication that consideration for primary care is valued; relieved because even in my brief introduction into medicine so far it has been hard not to become cynical sometimes about where I was headed.

Whereas access to primary care has

proven to be the leading indicator for an individual's and community's health, the reputation of primary care medicine has sunk to the bottom of the barrel, in the eyes of this whole generation of students entering the medical profession. Primary care physicians "make the least," "are the most ignored and undervalued in society," and they "are not respected"--these are just a few of the "truisms" I have heard mentioned by many peers so far.

I am on my way to become a second year medical student, and one of the few medical students remaining these days thinking of pursuing primary care medicine (down to only about 1% of us, in fact, despite an exponential explosion in the nation's impending need). I urge all of my peers & our political leaders to push & pass this increase in reimbursement to primary care physicians. If so, this will help encourage more future physicians to fill the much-needed primary care roles that will accompany America's increasing demand and (hopefully) expanded health insurance coverage. If not, the alarming trend of medical students' aversion to primary care will continue, and folks like me will be even lonelier, and maybe even altogether discouraged.

Sincerely, Abraham Young