Los Angeles Times: California’s primary care shortage persists despite ambitious moves to close gap

A black female clinician stares inquisitively at a screen of medical coding bills.

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  • The state has in recent years embraced several initiatives recommended in an influential healthcare workforce report, including alternative payment arrangements for primary care doctors to earn more.
  • Despite increasing residency programs, student debt forgiveness, and tuition-free medical school, California is unlikely to meet patient demand, observers say.

Sumana Reddy, a primary care physician, struggles on thin financial margins to run Acacia Family Medical Group, the small independent practice she founded 27 years ago in Salinas, a predominantly Latino city in an agricultural valley often called “the salad bowl of the world.”

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