Daniel Purdom
Occupation: Family doctor
Hometown: Kansas City, Mo.
"As a family doctor for twenty years and now the medical director of a community health center, I believe using mid-level providers to replace primary care physicians will simply continue to increase the complexity and cost of our system. Nurse Practitioners may refer up to 1/3 of their patients versus about 1/10 for family practice doctors. Two visits to take care of a problem and more specialists means more expensive care and no better outcomes. " "I think the natural path will be importing our primary care docs from overseas, as we do with many of our nurses now. As fewer U.S. medical students are going into primary care, we are already seeing increasing numbers of international medical graduates are being accepted into family medicine residencies."
NEXT: Evan Lewis
