AHRQ: Primary care experiencing 'diminishing economic margins'

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality notes in an upcomping installment of its "Facts and Stats Series" that, despite primary care's importance to the health care system, the discipline is facing a number of challenges.

Modern Healthcare: AHRQ Releases Stats On State Of Primary-Care Workforce
Despite serving as the "foundational element" of the U.S. healthcare system, the nation's primary-care network is experiencing "diminishing economic margins, and increasing workforce attrition compounded by diminishing recruitment of new physicians, nurses and physician assistants into primary care," according to the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. AHRQ's Center for Primary Care, Prevention and Clinical Partnership will be issuing a "Facts and Stats Series" on primary-care topics designed to inform healthcare policy and decisionmakers on primary care's workforce, capacity and growth needs (Robeznieks, 11/17).

Also in the news, Medscape reports on a diagnostic coding system change that will present a range of new challenges to physicians -

Medscape: Three Challenges That ICD-10 Brings to Doctors
On a go-forward basis, because of the increased specificity around ICD-10 [diagnostic coding system], there is the increased chance that improper coding is going to negatively affect reimbursements even more so than today because of that increased specificity. Physicians are really going to need to be hypervigilant about how they code and oversee the medical coding operation regardless of whether that's outsourced or done in-house (Kane and Weinstein, 11/17).