Primary Care Coalition releases new report that examines Texas’ broken health care system

posted 09.30.08

TAFP and its partners in the Primary Care Coalition released a report today that examines how primary care can mend Texas’ broken health care system. The report, “The Primary Solution: Mending Texas’ Fractured Health Care System,” takes the reader through the causes of the health care crisis facing Texas and details the possible benefits the state could realize by investing in primary care.

The outlook for Texas is grim. According to the report:

Health care costs continue to grow at an unsustainable rate, putting needed care out of reach for many Texans.
Increases in insurance premiums drive a growing percentage of employers to shift health care costs to their employees, to limit options or to stop providing health insurance altogether. Yet the insurance market fails to provide accessible or affordable coverage for those in need.
Texas currently faces a severe shortage of primary care physicians, which will only worsen as the population swells in coming years.
Patients are forced to navigate an exceedingly complex system with little or no guidance. The lack of communication and coordination of the care they receive results in increased hospitalizations, poor-quality care and escalating expense.
The absence of quality-improvement programs and adoption of clinical health information technology systems leads to poor overall quality of care.

“We’ve got a fractured health care system that doesn’t support cost-effective, coordinated, high-quality care for patients,” said TAFP President Robert Youens, M.D., of Weimar in a press release. “Our elected leaders must take immediate, bold steps to mend our broken health care system to ensure our patients receive the right care at the right time in the right setting.”

The report sets forth recommendations the Texas Legislature could take during the upcoming 81st Legislative Session: reform the private health insurance market, strengthen Medicaid and CHIP, grow the primary care workforce and invest in health information technology.

“By strengthening our primary care infrastructure, the Texas Legislature has within its means the ability to cure the disease that is plaguing our health care system,” Jane Rider, M.D., said in a press release. Rider is a pediatrician in San Angelo who serves as chair of the Primary Care Coalition. “The consequences of reduced access to primary care are clear—chronic disease will go unmanaged, patients won’t stop getting sick, but unable to access preventive and primary care services, they will seek more costly care in our overcrowded hospital emergency rooms, and health care costs will continue to increase.”

“The Primary Solution” is the third in a series of reports detailing the failings of the state’s expensive and inefficient health care delivery system. The previous two reports, “Fractured: The State of Health Care in Texas” and “Fading Away,” are available on the Advocacy Resources page of the TAFP Web site, www.tafp.org/advocacy/resources.

The Primary Care Coalition is comprised of almost 15,000 physicians from the Texas Academy of Family Physicians, the Texas Chapter of the American College of Physicians and the Texas Pediatric Society.