By Guy Culpepper MD
The supply of family physicians cannot be raised or lowered based upon yearly market fluctuations.
It takes 11 years of education to produce a family physician. Even after 11 years of education, new physicians are still years away from mastering their craft.
Trust me… when it comes to your physician, you do not want an amateur.
You can’t “just go train a few people” to work as family physicians. This is a lifetime commitment, not a seasonal end-aisle display.
Done properly, this is one of the hardest jobs in the world.
Even if improvements were made this very moment to attract the best physicians into primary care, it will take a generation before increasing access for patients. There simply are not enough PCPs.
Walgreens, CVS, Amazon, Walmart, all think they want a piece of the primary care pie.
It looks like easy money.
Surprise, surprise. It’s nothing like selling drugs.
DPC scalability is limited. At some point in the future it will reach a saturation point. although we are far from it for now. With the exception of sole DPC practitioners DPC organizations will necessarily need to expand their scope of services at some point in order to provide a broader services offering. Otherwise continued financial growth will stagnate and investors will park their money somewhere else for greater return
