Sitting in traffic Sunday with the rest of those migrating Turkey Day pilgrims, we caught a story by Karen Brown on NPR's All Things Considered. It seems long lines aren’t limited to the highways of Pennsylvania, and that many of those 440,000 newly—covered by health insurance in Massachusetts are having trouble getting access to a primary care doctor.

The story should be familiar to those who have followed closely the developments of Massachusetts. We've written in the past about some of the challenges facing the state's reform efforts.Physician shortages are certainly high on the list.

As Brown’s story makes clear, there was a great deal of pent of demand for health care among people who had long delayed care because they didn't have the insurance to pay for it. Now, with hundreds of thousands of newly—covered individuals, commentators like KevinMD aren’t surprised that facilities like Holyoke Health Center have waiting lists of more than 1,600 for an appointment.

Saturday, the Boston Globe examined a recent poll showing 96 percent of those surveyed had health insurance and 92 percent had a primary care doctor. Yet even with expanded coverage 14 percent of the adults who went to the ER last year in Massachusetts could have been treated by their doctors in a different setting, the survey found.

The primary reason: a lack of adequate, timely (and convenient) access to primary care, which serves as a reminder to lawmakers going forward that expanding coverage, controlling costs, and improving the delivery system are all issues that must be addressed by any successful reform effort. As John McDonough, one of the chief architects of the Massachusetts' reform who is now advising Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), told Brown, "What has happened is that Massachusetts' health reform has put a spotlight on the workforce shortages that don't get meaningfully talked about in just about any other state."

Fortunately for Massachussets, unlike New England quarterback Matt Cassel’s five-sack performance against the Steelers on Sunday, the state's health care system won’t just stand there and take it when faced with a pressing primary care shortage.

As we wrote earlier this year, the state has begun a loan forgiveness plan for new primary care doctors willing to work in underserved areas. Sunday’s Globe, also featured a story on the growing popularity of shared medical visits. As David Harlow writes over at the Health Care Law Blog: “This innovation addresses a couple of issues simultaneously: PCP shortage, under-reimbursement of cognitive services and patient dissatisfaction with too-short office visits.”

Senator Max Baucus focused a great deal on primary care in his recent white paper. In the more near future, lawmakers might consider including investments in the primary care workforce—especially those jobs with shorter training periods—to help meet current unmet demand for health care, stimulating the economy short run while reducing total health care costs in the long run.