Association of Primary Care Physician Supply With Population Mortality in the United States, 2005-2015

Abstract

Primary care physicians are typically responsible for the prevention, diagnosis, management, and treatment of a wide array of conditions. When examining area-level differences in the availability of primary care services and average large-area health statistics (at the international and state levels, in particular), higher availability of primary care services within a health system has been correlated with lower all-cause and cause-specific mortality. However, these cross-sectional correlations generally did not control extensively for other health care and socioeconomic confounders.^1-6 Consequently, the association of incremental increases in primary care physician supply with population-wide health outcomes remains heavily debated,^7-10 and whether to invest in policies that specifically aim to increase primary care physician supply is an important question in health care reform across many high-income countries. In the United States, in the absence of such policies, market forces have reduced primary care supply relative to higher-income specialties.^11-14