Primary Care Providers Shortage Proposal Student: Professor: Institution: Course Title: Date: Executive summary The current and predicted future trends for the shortage of primary care providers, which is and will be instigated by the Affordable Care Act, and the increasing population of the nation dependant on primary care, portray a diminishing steady drop in the number of primary care providers. This continues to create a gap between the demand of the population for primary care services and the capability of primary care providers to deliver quality primary care that would meet the demand. Primary care capacity can be increased through augmenting the prevailing primary care capacity and also increasing the number of primary care providers. The former can be done through assigning and coming up with new primary care responsibilities and roles, which include; incorporating the population health as part of the primary care practice; empowering licensed health practitioners; including and assigning some roles to registered nurses and pharmacists; generating a standing order for non-licensed health practitioners; amassing the potential for more patient self-care, and harnessing technology to add towards capacity. The numbers of primary care providers can be increased through changing the views on primary care to not only reflect greater reward and respectable income, but also prestige. This could boost the capacity of students interested in bec...
