Faculty Practice Plans: Caring for the Underserved?-Reply

Abstract

In Reply. —I am delighted with Dr Retchin's letter and agree with the thrust of his comments about the potential of FPPs to be valuable instruments in facilitating care to the chronically underserved, once financial access to care is provided through health care reform. At that point, patient care dollars will become available for services rendered to patients who previously could not pay. Most of us do not believe that financial reform will be sufficient to bring competing organized provision systems into remote rural or dangerous inner-city underserved settings. The existence of a physician practice plan could certainly allow for the hiring of the physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants likely to be necessary to provide basic ambulatory care to the population of an area. Furthermore, the specialty physician backup, available through the medical school practice plan, could smoothly assist the primary care providers as required. It would be splendid