We’ll help every neighborhood and community organize itself provide excellent healthcare for all residents. This includes having a doctor or nurse who knows you well and can take care of your health needs. Not everyone needs or wants a traditional fifteen-minute office visit to stay healthy. We’ll help communities redesign the primary care system so that person has the right level of care at the right time. Every neighborhood and community will have most of the medical services people need – your own doctor PA or NP, plus maternity care, mental healthcare, substance use disorder treatment, community health teams, physical therapy, nutrition, lab and x-ray, close to home and available when you need it.

Some places will choose community health centers to provide these services. Since their start in the Civil Rights Movement, federally-qualified community health centers now deliver primary care to 30 million Americans through 1,400 health centers in more than 10,000 communities. We envision a strengthened network of community health centers with better funding, more staff and strong clinical leadership.

We’ll also work to support the work of Direct Primary Care doctors and nurse practitioners, particularly in communities that don’t have large health centers to provide many services.  Direct Primary Care doctors and nurse practitioners limit the number of people they care for, so they can give more time and more attention to each person as they organize other health care services for their patients and provide exquisite access to their patients. Together we can build a system of services that is for people, not for profit, so that if you are sick today, we’ll get you seen today, and get the best treatment and advice, and so that we include everyone, in every community, as we prevent disease and disability.

What about specialists, hospitals, and other services?

We believe that there is an adequate supply, and sometimes an oversupply, of specialists, hospital, and other health services in many places in the US, while other areas do not have enough access to specialist and hospital care.  Primary care doctors, nurse practitioners and PAs do an excellent job of helping people choose the best services for any health challenges they may have.  Providing advanced primary care to all Americans will relieve the overcrowding of emergency departments by giving most Americans a more local and more personal option when they seek care. 
We look forward to the day when everyone has access to primary care, and universal primary care creates savings and the opportunity to reshape the organization and location of specialty and hospital services, making those services both more affordable and more accessible. For the present, PC4AA will leave the specialty and hospital market as it is, and work hard to make sure all Americans have access to advanced primary care clinicians and practices.