Evaluating the Nation's Largest Primary Care Delivery Model: Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+)

Strengthening primary care is thought to be a critical way to promote health and reduce health care costs in the United States. CPC+ is an advanced alternative payment model for primary care that began in 2017 and built on the foundation of the earlier Comprehensive Primary Care (CPC) initiative, both implemented by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation in partnership with other private and public payers around the country. This evaluation used mixed methods to assess whether CPC+ improved quality, reduced expenditures, and resulted in better health for Medicare beneficiaries in thousands of primary care practices. We analyzed claims data; surveys and qualitative interviews with patients, primary care practitioners, practice staff, practices, and payers; and data collected for CMS.

CPC+ was a public-private partnership that brought together CMS and 79 private and public payers. Together, the payers provided enhanced financial support for more than 3,000 practices in 18 regions to support fundamental changes in their care delivery toward accessible, comprehensive, team-based care for over 17 million patients. The 79 payer partners committed to align payment, data sharing, and quality metrics with CMS. CPC+ also included a robust learning system to support practice transformation.

Findings from our evaluation of the fifth and final year of CPC+ may be found in the Final Report and are summarized in the two-page Findings at a Glance. More detailed information may be found in Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the Appendices to the Final Report.

The final report on the evaluation of CPC+ builds on our findings from the evaluation’s first, second, third, and fourth years, as well as on our previous work, which includes an evaluation of CPC and research on patient-centered medical homes.