Are primary care physicians looking for examples of colleagues who aren burned out?
I think so, and it’s because the system is hard to work in now. We have abandoned the old solo practice model, but we didn’t quite make it to a prepaid group practice team model a la Kaiser Permanente. These are very choppy waters, particularly with all the commercial winds blowing through medicine in terms of reimbursements and referrals. With the profiles, I was trying to take this amorphous term “primary care” and give some historical and substantive understanding to it. When internists talk about primary care, they often are talking about fairly advanced primary care, including a fair amount of secondary and hospital care. When you have nurse practitioners talking about primary care, they are talking about a strong emphasis on health maintenance. While both are important aspects of primary care, these individuals can sound like they come from alien camps. Primary care has many colors, which makes it rich, but it also makes it hard for the people working in it to see they are all on
