When I said that medical schools were pushing primary care and discouraging specialty training, it seems that internal medicine was also considered "specializing" and what was being pushed was FP.
It was almost cult-like. Several years ago, I was asked to give a talk to a group of about 40 medical students that were touring our hospital about what being a private practice specialist was like. When I asked what "everybody wanted to be when they grew up", every one of them was going into FP. Every last one.
Now that OB has become too litigious to mess with and FP's are leaving inpatient care to hospitalists, many of the FP's have become glorified PA's. .... and are being paid accordingly.
In Florida where my parents live, a good portion of their friends have no primary care physician and have to get there care from urgent care clinics.
Heck, I don't have a primary care physician any more. My last two primary care physician quit their primary care practices (they were both in their mid-50's). I haven't bothered to get a new one. I guess it's time for me to order up some yearly blood work on myself.
You and me both. My primary care physician (internist) is retiring this year. Guess I’ll be taking care of myself as well!
Same position here. I see an internist from a competing group in town and would seriously consider being admitted to a competing hospital if the need arose. I imagine I could pull some rank and arrange something like that in our place but it just doesn't seem right when the everyday patient can't do that. I'm 55 and hoping to retire in the next two years. I actually can't wait but there is always the question of security and how much one needs to retire.
Yeah, it went hand in glove with "natural" childbirth.
Family practice residency programs are also a boon to medical centers because of the cheap, enforced labor. Now these residency programs can't get American med school grads and are filling up with Muslim immigrants.
However--the other sell for being an FP was a genuine one and appealed to a talented medical student--the desire to have a broad pool of interesting patients, to not do the same thing all day. (Think Lasik surgery). The opportunity to take care of an entire family over years--and this was true in the beginning. FPs would be small-town docs in the tiny regional hospitals and they liked delivering the baby and also being that baby's pediatrician.
But litigiousness stopped that--too much risk. And the little hospitals closed down because they were crtiticized for not being as good as the big hospitals. Well, d'uh.
Now you never hear a doc wanting his kid to go to medical school--which is the most telling development of all. Docs are sick and tired of the resentment of the general public, who are encouraged by the media to blame physicians for the high cost of medical care.
Soon--the cost won't be the problem. Availability will be the problem.