**3.1 Positive system impacts by primary care physicians despite obstacles**

Despite their relatively small numbers system-wide, primary care has been found to be markedly beneficial by many studies around the country, as these illustrate.


### **3.2 Negative system impacts due to shortage of primary care physicians**

The critical shortage of primary care physicians has led to these adverse system problems, which include increased costs and fragmentation of care of lower quality: *Primary Care in the USA: The Long Struggle to Build its Foundational Role DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98792*


The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the fragility and inadequacy of primary care, as shown by these markers:


With our continued lack of a national physician workforce plan, despite all the warnings along the way, the U. S. still confronts a shortage of between 21,000 and 55,200 primary care physicians by 2032, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges [27]. Money has everything to do with that challenging prognosis as U. S. medical graduates continue to seek out more highly reimbursed specialties, such as orthopedic surgery, anesthesiology, radiology, and dermatology.
