Starfield Video Reinforces 'Value of Family Medicine'

The AAFP's online resource Value of Family Medicine recently posted a new videoconference presentation (This video clip is approximately 13 minutes. For help, see: About QuickTime.) by renowned health policy researcher Barbara Starfield, M.D., M.P.H.

Starfield, a university distinguished professor in the health policy and management and pediatrics departments at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, gave the presentation, "Primary Care: Improving Quality and Reducing Costs," at a June round-table discussion sponsored by the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative. The Academy is a founding member of the collaborative.

During the presentation, Starfield described the inherent benefits of primary care in improving quality and reducing costs, themes she has addressed on a number of occasions in the past. However, she drew on new data to warn about the nation's reliance on subspecialty care, saying that the country's dependence on subspecialists has put Americans at an increased risk of death and disease, leading to poorer health care outcomes and driving up health care expenditures.

"Barbara Starfield has done some of the foundational work about understanding the value of primary care, and she has synthesized the known evidence around the world about the value of primary care," said Robert Phillips, M.D., M.S.P.H., director of the AAFP's Robert Graham Center in Washington. "That body of work has not been captured by anyone else, and it is a message that is being purposefully ignored in the United States. This video is another opportunity to put that evidence-based message back into the consciousness of people who would ignore it."

The Value of Family Medicine Web page provides links to abstracts, and, in some cases, the full text of articles on the contributions of family medicine and primary care to the health of patients and health care systems in general. Specifically, visitors can link to a 20-item list, dubbed the "Most Commonly Cited Articles," that gives information on more than 100 articles in the "Value of Family Medicine Bibliography," (110-KB Excel file; About Downloading) which appears as a separate link.