Madelyn Kearns

At the behest of affected patients and providers, Intermountain Healthcare decided to build what it calls a Personalized Care Clinic, an initiative that has the look of a patient-centered medical home, but offers services for a specific patient demographic facing complex, ongoing medical issues.

Operating costs, ICD-10, keeping pace with new technologies and surviving in a world of changing payment models -- those are just some of the challenges of running a modern medical practice.

After months fraught with website glitches and widespread industry opposition, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has made public Open Payments, its "new system of records" detailing physicians' receipt of payment and gifts from pharmaceutical companies and other third-party business associates.

As more focus is placed on value rather than volume, employers of physicians are changing their physician compensation models.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the country will have 62,900 fewer doctors than it will need in 2015. Allowing foreign doctors to practice in the U.S. could provide one solution to the problem.

Congress must repeal the sustainable growth rate formula to stabilize Medicare physician payments, and CMS needs to adopt a series of strategies that would strengthen the Medicare program by enhancing the role of primary care physicians, said the American Academy of Family Physicians in a recent letter to CMS.

A letter bearing the Friends of the AHRQ seal and the signatures of 139 organizations including the AAFP, illustrated the distress the bill has promoted within the minds and hearts of primary care advocates and initiates the nation over.