The term, primary care, currently garners little respect among medical circles.
Prospective doctors pick up on this during training, making it one reason why they tend to gravitate towards specialties.
So, should “primary care” undergo re-branding?
Internist Robert Centor thinks so, saying, “Primary care suffers in part because so few decision makers really understand how complex primary care is. So I recommend that we no longer use the phrase to describe this important, complex and rewarding profession.”
But, the ACP’s Bob Doherty says this may not be the right time to do so: “I think this would be unwise at a time when politicians and policymakers alike seem to buy into the idea that ‘primary care’ is the keystone of a high performing health care system.”
And indeed, given the prominent attention politicians have been recently paying to the importance of primary care, I tend to agree.
