Primary Care Physicians and the Quality and Cost of Medical Care

The role of primary care physicians has become central to the healthcare reform debate. In most previous studies, greater availability of primary care physicians has resulted in better care and lower cost, but the methodological issues are complex.

Researchers evaluated health outcomes for 5 million fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries according to two methods of measuring primary care access: One method was based on the number of family physicians and general internists per total population in 6542 primary care service areas (PCSAs); the other method used productivity data to calculate primary care physician full-time equivalents (FTEs) per 100,000 Medicare beneficiaries by PCSA. Quality outcomes were overall mortality and hospitalization…