As this system spreads across the state, nearly everyone with health insurance will be required to choose a primary care provider; insurers are considering assigning providers to people who don’t make a choice. Residents who have primary care doctors can anticipate hearing from them and their staffs more often, as they focus on bringing patients into the office for preventive care.
Doctors will be motivated to do this not only because it’s better care, but because they will earn more money if they keep their patients healthy - and thus out of hospitals, emergency rooms, and specialists’ offices.
You’ve heard of helicopter parents. Similarly, primary care doctors will hover over their patients. “This will increase the amount of contact people have with their doctors,’’ said Dr. Thomas Hines, a family practitioner at South Boston Community Health Center. “Everybody is going to have to learn new ways.’’
Because primary care doctors are in short supply, especially in Western Massachusetts and on Cape Cod, many doctors, including Dupee, are hiring nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants to form teams that will fill the gap. Some patients may end up choosing a nurse practitioner as their primary care provider, as allowed under a new state law. And certain popular physicians whose practices have been closed to new patients for years are opening up slots.
Patients naturally will be looking for more information on how to make these important choices, and state regulators and legislators are discussing how to provide people with more information about the quality and cost of medical care in different practices.
This new system works like this:
Primary care doctors, specialists and hospitals typically have billed insurance companies and government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid for each individual service they provide to patients, including office exams, lab and imaging tests, emergency room visits, and hospital admissions - with few limits on the number of services.
