Aug 20, 2012 – Extending Primary Care

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05 — 1,022.3KB)

Subscribe: RSS

ANCHOR LEAD: A WHOLE NEW COMMITMENT TO PRIMARY CARE IS NEEDED UNDER THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT, ELIZABETH TRACEY REPORTS

Primary care medicine is likely to come more sharply into focus as the Affordable Care Act is implemented and millions of people who’ve never had health insurance are now able to access medical care.  How will an academic medical center such as Johns Hopkins help answer this need?  Paul Rothman, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, comments.

ROTHMAN: Part of the solution to this would be utilizing mid-level providers, that’s nurse practitioners, that’s physician assistants, and others, to take care of these primary care population that we otherwise don’t have the physician workforce to take care of, and so that means you develop teams, where physicians, nurses, PAs and others work together as a team to take care of people, and I think that at Hopkins we’re hoping to help build those teams.   :26

Rothman says that primary care specialties are likely to become more attractive to medical students as reimbursement will also change under the Affordable Care Act.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.