The New Yorker's Clifford Marks has
a new piece on the threat posed by COVID-19 to primary-care physician practices. As with the case of
many cash-strapped hospitals whose bread-and-butter (mostly elective) procedures have dried up, primary-care physicians are being hit hard. From Marks's article:
“This is taking us down,” Jacqueline Fincher, an internist and the president of the American College of Physicians, told me. “We’re not going to have a vaccine and herd immunity for probably a year—so, is this sustainable for a year? The reality is, it’s probably not, certainly not for most small practices.” If many of them go out of business, the consequences for Americans’ health could be profound and enduring. What’s at stake is not just a pattern of health outcomes but the shape of the health-care system as a whole. The way that patients interact with their doctors and the path that American health care takes in the future may be about to shift.
