In Tucson, the Carondolet Nursing Network and St. Mary's Hospital have nurse practitioners at 17 primary-care clinics.

But few expect such enticements to fully staff primary-care clinics in the near future.

"Those primary-care clinics are no panacea," said Mr. Williams.

By 2005, Virginia Garcia had 65,000 patient visits a year across its four primary-care clinics, plus a dental and pharmacy office and a prenatal care clinic.

Companies have taken steps to protect confidentiality, by creating separate files for medical records, developing privacy rules and hiring outside vendors to run their primary-care clinics.

But he volunteered once a week in a free primary-care clinic for poor immigrants, and he found the work there more challenging than anything he was doing in the laboratory.

But few expect such enticements to fully staff primary-care clinics any time soon.

If Congress passes health-care reform that guarantees insurance coverage to everyone, money for these primary-care clinics will be assured.

But the outbreak is very real in central Brooklyn, as evidenced by Maimonides's packed emergency rooms and primary-care clinic.

Other companies have eliminated primary-care clinics, either because they did not consider them cost-effective or for other reasons.