The Future of Primary Care Medicine

Abstract

During the early and mid-1990s, a consensus emerged among physicians and health care policymakers that the United States would have a substantial surplus of physicians by the end of the decade. Most people who held this view also believed that the surplus would be limited to non–primary care physicians and that, by contrast, the supply of physicians planning to practice primary care medicine would be barely adequate. This view was supported by the decrease in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the number of graduating medical students who chose residency training in specialties that could lead to careers in . . .