The most urgent threat to our health isn't a microscopic virus or strain of bacteria. It's a shortage of doctors.
A whopping 83 million Americans don't have sufficient access to a primary care provider. Within a decade, we could be short almost 50,000 primary care physicians.
Educating and training more doctors is critical, of course. But that will take years, even decades. In the meantime, we need to maximize the capacity of our existing corps of providers by making the health system more efficient and managing illness more proactively.
In other words, we have to learn how to do more with less. An ongoing revolution in digital health care delivery − from telehealth visits to pharmacies that deliver to the home − can help us do just that.
First, a reality check. The health care status quo isn't working for most patients. Seven in 10 Americans say the system isn't meeting their needs, according to data from a 2023 Harris Poll.
Wait times are the top concern. As a physician, I've seen firsthand how our system forces patients to wait weeks for care, even for the most routine and easily treatable health conditions. New patients wait 26 days, on average, to see a primary care physician. On the day of the appointment, the average patient waits........