40% of care provided by specialists in US

Another reason why our health care system is broken? Nearly 40% of primary care services are provided by specialists, according to a research letter in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"This study highlights the fact that the US healthcare system is out of balance. If you look at research into the quality and cost of other industrialized nations, you see that their systems are based on primary care. In the United States, our physician workforce is approximately 70% subspecialists and 30% primary care physicians. We must work to rectify this and rebalance our system on primary care," Douglas Henley, MD, executive vice president and chief executive officer, American Academy of Family Physicians.