Where We Stand
Section: Health Care Delivery
Subsection: Primary Care
Primary Care
OMA’s definition of primary care is as follows:
- Primary care is a type of medical care delivery provided by a physician, which emphasizes first contact care and assumes on-going responsibility for the patient in both health maintenance and therapy of illness. It is personal care involving a unique interaction and communication and includes the overall coordination of the care of the patient's health problems with the appropriate use of consultants and community resources.
- The medical specialties of family practice, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology and pediatrics should be recognized as major, although not sole, components of the discipline, which, together with general practice, provide primary care to the American public.
- It is recognized that other specialties practice primary care in a limited sense as defined above, but they are not usually regarded as primary physicians.
Such recognition should in no way be interpreted in legislation or otherwise as precluding the patient from having a free choice of physician, or of the way in which he/she enters the health care system.
Adopted at the interim House of Delegates, 1976.
Reaffirmed at the annual House of Delegates, 2011.
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