Restoring Primary Care

Reframing Relationships and Redesigning Practice

To many practitioners, managers and patients, US primary care is in crisis. Primary care physicians are often overworked and undervalued, and both patients and care providers can feel locked into structures that lack compassion and are unfit for their intended purposes. Healthcare reforms aim to resolve the situation, but changes may take years to deliver and are contingent on numerous outside factors. What steps are within care providers' power to take now? This book lays out a course to deliver compassionate care, quality, and efficiency that - unlike many current patient-centred medical home initiatives in the US - does not require outside funding. After reflecting on avoidable problems and harms in primary care, the book offers stories of hope from innovative clinicians across the US before presenting ten practical, deliverable steps to lift primary care provision from 'poor' or 'mediocre' to 'great'. This book will be of interest to practicing family physicians and general internists, but will also be useful reading for health system leaders, healthcare insurance purchasers and insurance company executives.