This piece of information can help you to protect your family and yourself from minor health issues and primary care physician will refer or recommend a specialist for you according to you condition. Primary care physician play a very important role in our lives. Primary Care Physicians are divided in to different types.

Types of Primary Care Physicians:

Primary care physicians are categorized into different types according to the role they play and the field they have got training. It is not essential for a PCP to have a general practitioner for example there are many female gynecologists that serve as PC provider under some insurance plan. Here are some other doctors that are allowed under most health insurance plan to serve as PCP.

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TIME magazine ran an article noting that with healthcare reform that nurse practitioners may be critical in fixing the system. It bothered me not because I see nurse practitioners as competitors. It disturbed me because the article had elements of truth to it and yet reached the wrong conclusion.

“[Nurse practitioners - NPs] can often treat and diagnose patients, as well as prescribe medication. And they can do these things at a lower cost than doctors – Medicare, for example, reimburses nurse practitioners 80% of what is paid to doctors for the same services.”

This is true. Problem? The issue isn’t about how much the primary care provider makes but rather how many tests, imaging studies, and medications are ordered that drives overall healthcare costs (as noted recently in Atul Gawande’s New Yorker piece – Cost Conundrum.

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