Solo Practitioners Remain Important Contributors to Primary Care

• Although only 13 percent of practicing primary care physicians work at one-physician practice sites, this statistic may mask that in the six states for which we had data, nearly half (46 percent) of practice sites delivering primary care have only one physician.
• Defining practice size using the number of clinicians (physicians, nurse practitioners, or physician assistants) lowers the proportion in solo practice from 13 percent of physicians to 8 percent of clinicians, and the proportion of solo practices declines from 46 percent using the physician count to 34 percent using the clinician count.
• Small practices face challenges adopting delivery system innovations. In 2012, only 13 percent of one-clinician practice sites, compared with 18 percent of two-clinician sites and 26 percent of larger sites, had ≥1 clinician who is a certified meaningful user of electronic health records under the Medicare program. Only 2 percent of one-clinician practice sites had National Committee for Quality Assurance recognition as a patient-centered medical home in 2012, compared with 5 percent of two-clinician sites, and 9 percent of larger sites. However, these figures indicate that most larger practices also face such challenges.

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