Study: More Primary Care Could Mean Fewer Hospital Re-Admissions

Increasing the number of primary care doctors in the U.S. would bring down hospital re-admissions, according to researchers at Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine.

The study's lead author, Dr. Brian Jack, said boosting the number of family doctors could also reduce re-admission costs by more than $500 million per year nationally.

"Primary care has been shown to be cost-saving in a whole variety of different ways beyond that, so the effect on cost and quality of family physicians in the community is profound in a lot of different ways," he said.

Jack is calling for the number of family doctors to increase from 33 to 100 per 100,000 people.