Health Policy Trends: Virtual Primary Care

This paper examines whether the post-pandemic expansion of virtual primary care is actually improving access for patients. Its central finding is that much of what is called "virtual care" still amounts to physicians replacing in-person visits with phone calls. That shift can help patients who live far away or have mobility issues, but it does not remove the basic bottleneck of physician availability. If a clinic had too little appointment capacity before, moving some visits onto the phone does not solve the access problem by itself.

The paper is more optimistic about models that use technology to support team-based care rather than simply digitizing physician visits. It points to examples where virtual tools help connect patients not only with doctors but also with nurses, nurse practitioners, and specialists in coordinated ways that reduce wait times and improve care integration. The main policy implication is that fee-for-service billing and physician-centred assumptions can block the most useful forms of virtual care, so governments should consider payment and organizational models that support multi-disciplinary care teams.