A Country Doctor Writes

JULY 1, 2025

I wrote this when I was working for a fairly traditional primary care office, a Federally Qualified Health Center, which did have a somewhat preferential pay rate from Medicare and Medicaid, in part because we offered sliding feee to uninsured patients, in part because we offered a few “enabling services” as the bureaucrats call it.

Primary Care 233

Primary Care Patient-Centered Government Screening 233

Common Sense Family Doctor

JANUARY 19, 2025

Most patients who choose colonoscopy as a screening test for colorectal cancer are referred from primary care to a gastroenterologist or other specialist who performs endoscopy. But that wasn’t the case for the estimated 1 in 15 US patients whose screening colonoscopies were performed by family physicians in 2021.

Family Physician 52

Family Physician Families Family Board-Certified 52

Common Sense Family Doctor

FEBRUARY 28, 2025

Family physicians are being squeezed by two accelerating trends: (1) too few of us to care for the growing US population and (2) the rising number of tasks that we are asked to accomplish for each patient. Since 2020, the starting ages for breast, lung, and colorectal cancer screening were lowered to 40, 50, and 45 years, respectively.

Primary Care 52

Primary Care Family Physician Preventive Care Preventative Care 52

Common Sense Family Doctor

JUNE 20, 2025

For decades, five independent scientific advisory panels made evidence-based recommendations on clinical preventive services, community preventive services, newborn screening tests, infection prevention, and immunizations. Two of these panels have already been dissolved, and the remaining three are on life support.

Chronic Disease 92

Chronic Disease Diabetes Screening Vaccination 92