Why not eliminate this anachronistic charade of the general practitioner and use nurse practitioners and physician assistants to fill the gap? This is already happening in rural areas, which sometimes lack even a single primary care physician.

At a time when patients are craving more personalized care and search engines are providing "diagnoses" that are all too often incorrect, this sort of collaboration among physicians is essential to maintaining a first class health care system.

Private practices will not disappear, but increasingly they will become a niche to provide good old fashioned service to the generation in the habit of "going to see my doctor," while the more mobile young have already discovered the instant gratification of clinics and particularly the ERs.

The insufferable pace of primary care combined with the erosion of the doctor-patient relationship deters young physicians from entering the field. In my graduating class of 30 or so internal medicine trainees, only two of us chose to go into primary care.

Because primary care providers are the initial contact for patients with a wide array of conditions, we are the proverbial Jack of all trades. But we also think broadly about what may be wrong.

WASHINGTON — Better beat the crowd and find a doctor. Primary care physicians already are in short supply in parts of the country, and the land...

With the passage of health care reform, an estimated thirty two million new patients will try to find primary care doctors. That's not going to be so easy because we already face a shortage of primary care doctors.