Healthcare Payment Reform Is Critical To Improving Primary Care

Houston Healthcare Initiative Podcast

Access to and paying for healthcare is a topic that Dr. Goldstein talks about a lot on the podcast and this one is no exception. But in this case access to primary care is a matter of the number of doctors who choose to pursue primary care as a career. Pay for those roles is lower than it is for most specialists. A lower number of primary care doctors are linked to 85 deaths every day according to a study published by the National Academy of Sciences. In addition to a shortage of practicing doctors, primary care visits declined significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Add to that a good number of primary care practices were not able to access federal funds and relief and went under. How can we manage all this? For answers we turn to respected neurologist and the founder of the Houston Healthcare Initiative, Dr. Steven Goldstein.