CHCE Forum: Measuring Comprehensiveness of Primary Care: Past, Present, and Future
Comprehensiveness of primary care refers to the extent to which primary care clinicians who are part of primary care teams recognize and meet the majority of each patient's physical and mental health care needs. These needs include prevention and wellness, acute care, chronic care, and managing multiple conditions. Comprehensive primary care is associated with increased equity and efficiency in health care, improved care continuity, and less fragmentation. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that the past decades have seen a decline in the comprehensiveness of primary care across the country. Given this decline, measuring primary care comprehensiveness is an emerging priority for the health research, policy, and care delivery communities.
Mathematica's Center on Health Care Effectiveness (CHCE) hosted a forum to discuss past, present, and potential future efforts to measure comprehensiveness and improve patient-centered primary care. Topics covered included:
- Prior efforts to measure comprehensiveness in primary care
- Developing measures of comprehensiveness using survey data, claims, and clinical data
- Challenges to measuring comprehensiveness and directions for future research
Eugene Rich, CHCE's director, opened the forum, followed by a presentation by Ann O'Malley, a senior fellow at Mathematica.
Our panel of experts also included:
- Bob Phillips, Vice President of Research and Policy, American Board of Family Medicine
- Jan Genevro; Lead; Primary Care Implementation Team; Center for Primary Care, Prevention, and Clinical Partnerships; Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
- Laura Sessums, Director, Division of Advanced Primary Care, Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation
