President's Message

Primary Care Investment – Influence Where Money Flows

Those of us working in family medicine primary care know that we are the ultimate foundation of our medical system, and that if that foundation is not strong or if it falters or cracks, the entire structure of medicine is going to fragment as well. We are the only specialty in medicine that increases the quality of care for our patients and communities while at the same time driving down costs and keeping that care financially sustainable. We are the only specialty who can offer truly holistic, longitudinal, comprehensive, continuity-focused and relationship-based care that is optimal for improving patient outcomes and helps to save the system time and money in the long run.

Yet according to the Health Care Cost Institute’s recent publication in September 2025 and also previously put forth by the World Health Organization (WHO), only approximately 4% of Medicare expenditure was allotted to primary care throughout the entire United States in the year 2022 . (4% of Health Spending Goes to Primary Care - HCCI; Investing in Primary Care: A Work in Progress - PMC). That 4% is applying a broad definition regarding who counts as a primary care provider, and if that definition is narrowed to include only true primary care specialties like family medicine, that percentage drops to only 2 to 3% or even lower in some states. Clearly this needs to improve to make our healthcare system in the United States the best that it can be.

The WAFP wants to be at the forefront for advocating for and leading this change. This starts by first communicating the importance of primary care investment to our physician members, medical students and residents. A second very important step is educating our patients and communities so that they know how essential having a personal family physician is and why more federal healthcare dollars need to be invested in primary care. Notably, it also needs to be conveyed to them that this means more dollars invested directly in their care, and not in raising physician salaries which may be a misconception by the general public as to the true definition of primary care investment. Lastly, we need to be more engaged with our state legislators in advocacy efforts in this arena. If we do not stand up for ourselves and for our specialty, who else will? Primary care physicians need to have a seat at the table to best defend and advocate for our specialty. We’ve put together a workgroup who is working on pursuing primary care investment in our state. If this is something you’re interested in being involved in, please reach out to our staff to volunteer.

Grow & Maintain a Family Medicine Workforce

One of the primary goals of the WAFP is to attract medical students to the field of family medicine, encourage them to stay in the state of Wisconsin to complete their family medicine residency training and then remain here for the duration of their Family Medicine careers going forward into the future.

To effectively do this, we first aim to increase medical student interest and awareness in the WAFP and the resources and support that we have available to them. This includes providing education on what family medicine practice can look like and why Wisconsin is a great place for family physicians to practice. Strategies to meet this aim include being more involved with Family Medicine Interest Groups (FMIG) at the medical school level and increasing connection with our many outstanding family medicine residency programs throughout the state of Wisconsin.

In our current environment, there is a high value placed on work-life balance, and rightly so. We need healthy and well-cared for physicians to be able to effectively and safely care for our patients. The objective of the WAFP is to frame what this might look like for all generations of family physicians across our state. This includes focusing on building a sense of community among all of our members and working as hard as we can to decrease administrative burden. This is where member advocacy on the system-level is so important since so many of us are in employed practices throughout the state that have the ultimate control over our medical records, documentation requirements and administrative workflows. In addition, on a national level, the AAFP supports its members very well through legislative advocacy on decreasing administrative burden, working on prior authorization reform and focusing on physician wellbeing and sustainability.

The academy also recognizes the value of diverse models in the delivery of primary care including supporting those who choose to deliver care in more non-traditional settings such as Direct Primary Care (DPCs) and other innovative practice models, and we want to continue to promote these unique endeavors and those who pursue them more into the future.

Support & Promote Family Physician Scope of Practice

Strong family medicine training prepares us to practice the full scope of family medicine, and the goal of the WAFP is to continue to protect this for our state’s residency training programs. We also strive to support those physicians who continue to choose to practice true full spectrum cradle-to-grave family medicine, including obstetrics, in their careers after training. The more one tailors their practice to not include procedural care, obstetrics or inpatient medicine, the more your job could be easily replaced by nurse practitioners or physician assistants in the future. The healthcare system is shortsighted and will focus only on the initial decreased cost of hiring these providers rather than looking long term at the consequences of this including decreased overall quality of care, the potential for patient safety concerns if appropriate oversight is not required and overall increased cost of care with more tests and referrals to expensive specialty care that may not be warranted or necessary.

Although these mid-level providers play an integral role in our increasingly multidisciplinary healthcare landscape and will continue to play an important role in to the future, they are simply not physicians and do not have near as rigorous of education or training as compared to a physician. For this reason, they should be working in collaboration with their physician colleagues and as part of the physician-led health care team, not in silos or in isolation. For them to be able to work more independently, there needs to be clear definitions about what post-graduate training and transition to practice for new nurse practitioners looks like as there is great heterogeneity in the types and quality of nurse practitioner training programs, including online only NP programs that do not provide a significant amount of hands-on actual patient care experience prior to graduation to be able to safely then shift to clinical practice. For this reason, we believe strongly in physician title protection with only those with true physician education and training credentials being reserved the ability to call themselves “doctor” along with public truth in advertising about health care clinician training to the patients and communities in which we serve.

Much of the positive movement on this goal, comes from advocacy at the state level and the hard work of the WAFP legislative committee in pursuing legislation in this realm, which they have been working tirelessly on your behalf over the past several years and will continue to do so. If this is one of your passions, you can become more involved by joining directly in these advocacy efforts yourself, or by financially contributing to the WIFamMedPAC which can be found on the WAFP website at the following link: WIFamMedPAC.

The WIFamMedPAC collects member monetary contributions into a single account and then distributes them to political candidates who recognize and support Family Medicine, supporting both Republican and Democrat candidates on both sides of the aisle who have demonstrated active support of policies of great significance to our specialty. These funds are dispersed under the direction of a governing board comprised of WAFP leadership who judiciously, fairly and strategically determine to whom these funds are allocated.

I hope that with this more detailed definition of the 3 main areas of focus of our organization’s current strategic plan, you are better able to see how we aim to actively live up to the WAFP vision of “competent, compassionate, thriving Family Physicians advancing the health of our communities.”

If any of these areas of focus particularly resonate with you, and you want to become more involved with WAFP’s implementation of these, please do not hesitate to reach out. We would be delighted and grateful to work more closely with you!