There is an impending shortage of doctors. Actually, that’s not true. It’s already here. Some areas of the country have already been designated as federal health professional shortage areas. Projections from the Association of American Medical Colleges are even bleaker. They anticipate a shortage of 37,800 and 124,000 physicians by 2034. As many as 17,800 to 48,000 of them will be general practitioners. That could make it hard for you to get a primary care doctor, and that’s bad for a number of reasons.

More Prevention and Better Attention

Addressing primary care shortages could drastically improve health outcomes.

Diagnosis Life summary:
A study in Annals of Internal Medicine (https://doi.org/10.7326/M20-7381) looked at the population size of 3,104 counties and the number of primary care doctors. The researchers then looked at health incomes (e.g., all-cause mortality, cancer-related deaths, heart disease, infections, injuries, respiratory disease, and substance abuse). People living in areas with fewer than one physician for each 3,500 people lived 310.9 days less than people who lived in areas with more primary care physicians. Adding more primary care physicians to these areas could increase life expectancy by 22.4 days. Adding PCPs to areas where there was one physician for every 1,500 people would increase it by 56.3 days. It’s not as easy as you think. This would require tens of thousands of physicians to close the gap.

Areas with more primary care access have longer life expectancies.

Diagnosis Life summary:
Access to primary care helps to keep individual people healthy but did you know it can keep communities healthy too? A study in JAMA Internal Medicine (https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2018.7624) found a direct correlation between access to primary care doctors and life expectancy. Researchers used data from the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile to identify practicing primary care physicians. They then used U.S. Census data for population stats. Crunching some numbers, they found that life expectancy increased by 52 days for each additional 10 primary care providers per 100,000 people! Put another way, every primary care doctor has the potential to help 10,000 people live longer lives.

People who have a primary care doctor have better continuity of care and lower mortality rates.

Diagnosis Life summary:
People who have a primary care doctor have someone to coordinate their care. Not only do they manage a number of medical conditions themselves, they are the go-to person for any specialists you need to see. A systemic review of 13 studies in the British Journal of General Practice (https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp20X712289) proved the point. Primary care physicians provided better continuity of care and their patients tended to do better than people who did not have one, especially when it came to heart disease. Mortality rates were also lower for people who had a primary care doctor.

Black people may live longer when they have a black primary care provider.

Diagnosis Life summary:
Representation matters. Unfortunately, there is not a proportionate distribution of white physicians to minority physicians. A study in JAMA Network Open (https://10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.6687) looked at disparities in U.S. counties where there was at least one Black primary care doctor. The good news is that the more Black primary care physicians that practiced in a given county, the better the care and the longer the lives were for Black patients in that county. Better yet, the number of counties with Black providers increased by nearly 10% from 2009 to 2019. The bad news is that there are still counties that do not have any representation at all. The U.S. health system needs to do more to assure that patients have access to providers that share their cultural experience.