New York Times Looks at Need to Pay FPs More

The New York Times has trumpeted the message that family doctors need to be paid more in an article published Nov. 7 -- the same day that the AAFP and about 40 major employers, insurers, consumer groups, physician organizations and other stakeholders in the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, or PCPCC, sponsored a national health care summit in Washington.

The article refers to the summit, during which the PCPCC announced its intent to use a set of criteria that will allow primary care practices to voluntarily be recognized as patient-centered medical homes. The criteria were developed by the independent National Committee for Quality Assurance.

"Seeing low fees for family doctors as a weak link in the nation's health care system, some big employers and health insurers are seeking new ways to pay doctors to reward high-quality medical care," begins the article, written by Milt Freudenheim.

"Health policy experts say that unless payment and practice rules are changed, the financial squeeze on primary care doctors threatens to produce a crisis for patient care," the article continues. "As the population ages, it needs more care, but primary care doctors are becoming scarce in many parts of the country. Less than 8 percent of medical school graduates chose family medicine this year, according to the academy of family doctors."

The coverage quotes Paul Grundy, M.D., IBM's director of health care technology and strategic initiatives. "We don't want to buy the kind of care we're getting any more," Grundy says. "We have turned doctors into little chipmunks on a wheel, pumping out patients every five minutes."

The article notes that experiments based on the patient-centered medical home model "indicate that money can be saved by helping patients deal with conditions like diabetes, asthma and heart conditions by avoiding emergency room visits and hospital admissions."