Despite renewed interest in strengthening primary care in the United States in recent years, there remains an inadequate understanding of what primary care is and does, insufficient investment in its infrastructure and growth, inadequacy in its workforce numbers and distribution, and inefficient coordination with other sectors. In an effort to fill some of the gaps in knowledge by offering a snapshot of the facts and figures that make up contemporary U.S. Primary Care, the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) collaborated with the American Academy of Family Physicians Robert Graham Center and IBM Watson Health to create a recently published chartbook, Primary Care in the United States: A Chartbook of Facts & Statistics.

The intent is that the information presented in the chartbook will not only ignite a desire to learn more but will simultaneously serves as a foundation to improve this vital sector of the healthcare system. Although the chartbook cannot paint a complete portrait of a domain as broad as primary care, “the hope instead is that readers will find the array of facts and figures collected to be helpful in their understanding of primary care, well-established as the ‘central’ and ‘essential’ feature of any robust health system,” said Andrew Bazemore, MD, MPH, Senior Vice President of Research and Policy at ABFM.