Good primary care physicians are becoming harder and harder to find.

• A year from now we’ll find it almost impossible to find primary care doctors who are willing to take on new patients – at least any primary care doctor worth seeing won’t be doing so.
• Smart patients and their advocates know that today is the day to be sure they have good relationships established with primary care doctors.

Why?  There are two major reasons

• First comes the fact that medical students spend some time in school, and then choose their specialty area.
  1. They contrast the excitement of surgery or saving a heart patient’s life, with the sniffly noses and broken legs of primary care.
  2. Then they figure out that as a surgeon or neurosurgeon, it will take them only a handful of years to repay their student loans.
  3. As primary care doctors, who make far less than their specialist counterparts, it will take more like 15 or 20 years to repay those loans.
  4. So few medical students are choosing primary care these days, and so many are retiring, or leaving their practices.
• The second reason is not an inside influence, but one that comes from the outside — WE are the reason.
  1. As the numbers of available primary care doctors dwindle, the numbers of people who need their help are climbing.
  2. Baby boomers are aging – and the older we get the more appointments, tests, procedures and follow up appointments we seem to need. The more we need, the fewer there are for others.
• Smart patients know they need to establish a good relationship with a primary care doctor right away, if they don’t already have one.
• Make an appointment to get a check-up or to check out some dumb, nagging symptom you’ve tried to ignore.
• Then be sure you find a reason to get in to see that primary once or twice a year, otherwise you may end up being dropped from his or her roster of patients.
• Smart advocates know that their client-patients need to have that relationship established, and will make sure their clients get that relationship established if it doesn’t already exist.

Read More on http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/04/smart-patients-establish-relationship-primary-care-doctor.html