Soon No Specialties Left to Limit Family Medicine Scope
Recent meetings of family physicians brought up the age old question of expanded scope. Some raised concerns about threats to this scope. As is the usual, what is most important is the context. Where half of Americans are found, there is not a reason to be concerned about scope. Only in highest concentration settings are family physicians limited - since all specialties other than family medicine concentrate in higher concentration settings. The competition is less and less of a problem regarding broad scope for family physicians in lowest physician concentration counties. Few of the other specialties remain and many are in decline. This places more burdens upon the remaining family practice workforce. This comes at a bad time as the practices require more time for documentation and there is less time for expanded scope such as hospital and procedural activities. As discussed previously in recent blogs, the payment designs ...