The pandemic may have taught Americans more about the potential of primary care than anything they’d experienced in an exam room in the past, MarketWatch reports.
Think about it: We learned how to take COVID-19 tests in the privacy of our own homes and sought out care in nontraditional settings like retail chains. We’ve become comfortable enough with telehealth that it made up about 13% of all primary care at the end of 2021. (Virtual primary care constituted 1% of visits in 2018.) All of this showed the public — and investors — that making primary care easier to access is widely beneficial.
“The pandemic was a forcing function for innovative care-delivery models out of necessity,” said Dr. Erin Ney, an internist and an expert associate partner at Bain & Co.
Corporations have for years been pouring billions of dollars into primary care. CVS Health is now the largest provider of retail health services in the country. Humana and the private-equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe this year put an additional $1.2 billion into a venture that plans to develop 100 primary-care clinics for seniors. Read more.
