Community-oriented primary care. The cornerstone of health care reform.

The current high-cost health care delivery system, which places greater emphasis on acute hospital care than on community-based primary and preventive care, is no longer viewed by policymakers, politicians, and the American public as the ideal model for organizing and providing health care services. Americans want change; however, politicians are responding with a barrage of disjointed finance and cost-containment proposals that fail to address the organization and provision of health care services. Nevertheless, to adequately address problems of cost, access, and quality, reform proposals will need to consider delivery models that create a balance between medical care and health care, between public health and personal health services, and between curative and preventive care. The community-oriented primary care model and the discipline of community and socially responsive medicine is a process for making a health care system more rational, accountable, appropriate, and socially relevant to the public. Consequently, this model, which is now at a pivotal point in its evolution, may serve as a paradigm for reforming the organization and provision of health care services in America.