Texas faces the most severe health care strain in the United States, driven by the nation’s highest uninsured rate and a shortage of primary care physicians, according to the Health care Strain Index released by ConciergeMD.
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The numbers are sobering. More than 100 million Americans are estimated to lack a regular primary care provider, while the Association of American Medical Colleges projects a shortage of as many as 40,400 primary care physicians by 2036. Those numbers are often presented as a workforce problem that we will eventually have to solve. From where I sit, however, this is not a future problem. It is already happening in doctors’ offices across the country. I see it every day.
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Medicare and Medicaid funding cuts are predicted to worsen existing workforce gaps, particularly in rural and underserved areas, a new report shows.
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Millions of Americans aren’t able to get and afford the care they need, find appropriate medical providers in their area, or get help managing their conditions. The U.S.’s high health care costs, lack of universal coverage, severe health inequities, and poor long-term health outcomes impede many Americans’ ability to get and stay healthy over their lifetimes. In a new survey, the Commonwealth Fund asked people to identify what they think are the most important problems in the health care system and who should be best able to solve them.
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This data brief presents findings from the 2025 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey of Primary Care Physicians to examine care coordination in 10 countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We report on the types of clinicians coordinating care, the timeliness of care delivery, the information being exchanged between providers, and reported barriers to coordination. We also identify key lessons for how countries can improve care coordination.
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While public health systems have plenty of room to become more trustworthy, I am increasingly convinced that much mistrust stems also from health systems. In a recent YLE survey, for example, more than 1 in 2 participants had difficulty finding a primary care provider.
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This video is part of an ongoing, year-long Medscape series examining the decline of public trust in medicine.
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Sweden is aligning primary care access goals with physician workforce policy more explicitly. Rather than treating physician training as separate from care delivery, Sweden is using workforce policy as a tool to strengthen continuity, accessibility, and person-centered primary care. To support this goal, the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare analyzed primary care workload and physician capacity, established a benchmark of one primary care physician per 1,100 residents, and issued recommendations to guide regional workforce planning toward that target.
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A new report on New York’s healthcare workforce says the state still doesn’t have enough primary care providers, especially in upstate regions, leaving millions of residents with fewer options for routine care and longer waits for appointments.
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A new qualitative study published in The Annals of Family Medicine spotlights how day-to-day practice differs between U.S. primary care physicians working for health systems and those in independent settings. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 physicians, the researchers identified five recurring themes that capture the practical trade-offs behind the growing shift toward employed models of care.
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