With a $20 million gift from Robert and Myra Kraft, Boston-based Partners HealthCare is launching a program to attract doctors and nurses to Massachusetts community health centers, the cornerstone of the push to reduce health costs and care for newly insured patients. Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, said he intends the donation to serve as seed money that will inspire other philanthropists as well as states to support similar programs to increase the number of internists, family practitioners, pediatricians, psychiatrists, and obstetrician/gynecologists dedicating their careers to community medicine rather than to higher-paying, more glamorous specialties and private practices. Many primary care doctors are now so busy they will not accept new patients.
