Family practice triumphs by the year 2020: what will we have done right?

For family practice in the United States to be considered a success in the year 2020, several things will need to be done right between now and then. These include (1) an emphasis on quality of care, (2) a dependence on new technologies to enhance quality, (3) availability of and access to primary care for the entire US population, (4) increased political power for the specialty of family practice, (5) enhanced research and research funding, and (6) learning to work with patients so that they are the masters of their own care. If successful in 2020, family physicians will be perceived as quality physicians who use technology that everyone wants and who use their political power to advocate for patients' rights to quality health care and the research important to the discipline and quality health care. Family physicians will have become the "go-to doctors" who put patients in charge.