VIDEO: More resources needed to strengthen primary care, improve health equity

In this video, Robert L. Phillips Jr., MD, MSPH, the director of the Center for Professionalism and Value in Health Care at the American Board of Family Medicine, discusses ways to strengthen primary care in the United States.

Phillips references an editorial he wrote in response to three papers published in Annals of Family Medicine that illustrate how “starved” primary care is for resources.

“We spend less than 1% of all federal research dollars in health care on primary care, yet primary care provides more than a third of all health care visits and more than half of all outpatient visits. It is where most people go for their health concerns,” Phillips told Healio. “We are understudying the largest platform for health care. ”

In his editorial, Phillips wrote that “ primary care should be a common good” in the U.S. Yet, that is not the case; the U.S. has very low health equity and worse patient outcomes compared with other high-income countries.

Phillips also cites a report published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in May 2021 that called for a coordination of primary care with national health priorities. The report prompted the creation of the Initiative to Strengthen Primary Health Care, which is working to develop a federal office or council specifically focused on using primary care strategies to improve health equity, Phillips said. This office or council would involve “somebody who wakes up every morning worried about whether our primary care strategy is working across government to deal with the nation’s most burning health outcome priorities,” he added.

References:

Bierman AS, et al. Ann Fam Med. 2022;doi:10.1370/afm.2788.

Henry TL, et al. Ann Fam Med. 2022;doi:10.1370/afm.2789.

Phillips RL. Ann Fam Med. 2022;doi:10.1370/afm.2802.

Rodriguez J, et al. Ann Fam Med. 2022;doi:10.1370/afm.2785.