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Palo Alto Medical Foundation has stopped taking new primary care patients indefinitely, announced David Hooper, MD, senior administrator for clinical services.

Affected are the departments of family practice, internal medicine and pediatrics located in Palo Alto, Los Altos, Fremont and Redwood Shores. Patients registered before the effective date of Aug. 1 will continue to be seen in primary care and are not affected by the moratorium, the clinic announced July 31.

New patients may still make appointments in all other departments and the Urgent Care Center is open to anyone requiring same-day care for acute medical problems,

Hooper said. Hooper said PAMF is monitoring the community's health care needs closely and will reopen individual medical practices as soon as possible. "We are actively recruiting physicians and exploring opportunities for adding facilities, but it will take some time for us to be able to accommodate an influx of new patients.

"We are concerned that there are thousands of people who may be forced to look for new sources of health care in our community following the closings of several local medical groups and Stanford Hospital's decision to end its [capitated] HMO contracts," Hooper said.

"Unfortunately, we cannot provide all these potential patients with primary care services right now, because our staff of physicians and nurses is fully committed with our present patients. Our physicians are concerned that they may not be able to continue to provide high-quality, timely care to our current patients if we suddenly add more patients to their practices.

"We can't increase our staff quickly enough," he said.

Hooper said a critical shortage of medical professionals in Northern California exacerbated PAMF's difficulties.