PRIMARY CARE SERVICES

Group and Individual Primary Care Services

Group and Individual Primary Care Services

Introduction

The purpose of this study is to expand the boundaries of the author's knowledge by exploring some relevant facts related to different aspects of primary care services. Primary care is the first contact and point of consultation for patients with undiagnosed symptoms, signs, or health concern not limited by problem origin (behavioral, biological, or social) diagnoses, or organ system. Primary care includes disease prevention, health promotion, counseling, health maintenance, patient education, treatment and diagnosis of chronic and acute illness in a variety of healthcare settings (e.g. impatient, office, long-term care, critical care etc.). Primary care is managed and performed in collaboration with other health care professional such as nurses and paramedic staff or performed separately by General Physician, dependent on the condition and primary care requirements of a patient. Primary care service/department/unit is hosted within the premises of hospitals that treat critically ill patients immediately with high quality care. Hospitals are specially equipped to attend to emergency cases. Most of the primary care services are provided on emergency basis. After primary service provision, patients then receive secondary services which are often long-term.

In the next section, the author will examine whether it would be more efficient for general practitioners to provide primary care services in separate practices or in a group practice

Case Study Analysis

Theory of economies of scale: Cost efficiency of Group and Solo GPs

With reference to cost efficiency of Group or Solo GPs, the main concern of the economies of scale is reducing costs. The paradigm is to produce more and faster is less expensive. It is assumed that the costs are in the business and therefore it must be accelerated and controlled with standardizations and objectives of production per worker. It is the mechanization of the activity. In terms of productivity, group GPs are more effective and efficient as compared to solo GPs. As they work in groups, they are able to cater more patients per day as compared to solo general practitioner.

Economies of scale is applied when there is minimum input that produces maximum output. Similarly, the cost factor is also considered during the maximization of productivity. With reference to cost, solo practitioners usually have to incur more cost in providing healthcare services, since they use their own funds to provide medical healthcare, the per patient cost increases. Whereas, group GPs get more cost benefits because of the fact that the number of patients they operate on daily basis is higher than those operated individually, eventually, the per patient cost decreases. Judging by the current trend, the U.S. will have only one-third of the total physicians left in the private or solo-practices. The radical shift has not come about naturally. The proposed cuts to the Medicare physician fee schedule conversion factor, the additional bundling of specialty procedure codes, the challenges associated with EHR implementation, and the monumental shift to ICD-10 have all been instrumental in forcing physicians to hospitals, which are deemed to be safe haven for off-loading administrative ...