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State Primary Care Investment Strategy: Nine Key Levers
While high-quality primary care is the foundation of an effective health system, simply setting an ambitious primary care spending target does not guarantee better care, access, or equity. In recent years, more states have announced plans to increase or even “double” primary care spending as a share of total health expenditures. Yet only a small…
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Key Lever 1 – Authorizations, Goals & Objectives: From Spending Targets to Plans
Over the last several years, headlines have touted that multiple states are doubling their primary care spending as a percentage of total health expenditures. But only five states[1] have formal, enforceable primary care spending targets. And five additional states participating in CMS’s AHEAD program have committed to increasing primary care spending as a share of…
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Key Lever 7 Primary Care Reimbursement: Overcoming the Challenges
The main purpose of the primary care investment “movement” is to distribute more healthcare spending to primary care in the belief that it is a more cost-effective way to care for people than the current system. A complementary belief shared by many healthcare professionals is that the most appropriate way to reimburse primary care practitioners…
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Rural Health Transformation: A Proving Ground for State Primary Care Investment
The $50 billion federal Rural Health Transformation (RHT) Program is an unprecedented injection of capital averaging $200M per state annually through 2030. While legally earmarked for rural areas, smart state leaders know this isn’t just rural relief; it’s the launchpad for broader statewide primary care transformation. When you pair $1B per state in federal investment…
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Key Lever 6 – Infrastructure & Investment: Building State Primary Care Capacity
Despite broad agreement that the United States has insufficient primary care capacity, the health policy literature has devoted far more attention to how primary care should be paid for than to how states can develop and finance the additional capacity a high-functioning system requires. The shortage is evident at the most basic level: too many…
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State Primary Care Funding Strategy: An Infrastructure Investment Fund
Written by a former healthcare investment banker, who raised over $2 billion for voluntary hospitals, HMOs and related organizations, and the author of Rethinking Primary Care Investment Strategy and Nine Key Levers: A Framework for Implementing States’ Primary Care Investment Strategies. Any state that wants to invest in primary care should consider establishing a Primary…
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Key Lever 5 – Provider Organization & Governance: Designing a Statewide Primary Care System
The purpose of Key Lever 5 is to design a statewide network of high-functioning primary care organizations (PCOs) that meet the needs of the state population (see Key Lever 2), provide them with a complete spectrum of care and governance principles that protect them from potentially conflicting objectives of the organizations that provide the necessary…
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Key Lever 4 – Primary Care Workforce Planning: Translating Spending Targets into Better Healthcare Delivery
Introduction Over the past several years, a growing number of states have adopted or are actively considering primary care spending targets. These targets are typically associated with familiar aspirations: better access to care, better health outcomes, better management of chronic disease, lower avoidable emergency department utilization, lower avoidable hospital utilization, greater health equity, and better…
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Key Lever 3 – Governance & Stakeholder Participation: Protections and Accountability Standards for Primary Care Organizations
fter completing Rethinking Primary Care Investment Strategy, it became clear that state-level executives could benefit from a framework to help them organize “a multi-year planning, development, and implementation effort involving numerous public and private sector stakeholders, including payers, providers, employers and NGOs,” as described in Lever 1: Authorizations, Goals and Objectives. The result is nine…
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Key Lever 2 – Primary Care Needs Assessment: Translating statewide primary care goals into programs
Key Points This is the second in a series of articles on the nine Key Levers of primary care investment. The first was Maximizing Primary Care Investment Value: A Framework for State Leaders. Introduction Most states and healthcare professionals nationwide already recognize that we face a significant and growing shortage of primary care professionals: physicians,…
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Rethinking Primary Care Investment Strategy
As a former healthcare investment banker, I observe what others have pointed out: that the U.S. will not fix its primary care crisis with higher annual expenditures alone. I argue for treating primary care as essential infrastructure by expanding the workforce through state-backed financing and loan relief, building modern information infrastructure with interoperable data platforms…
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Maximizing the Value of Employee Benefits with Quality Measurement & Reporting
Peter A. Wadsworth (LinkedIn 8/8/2024) Investing in healthcare quality initiatives is a cost-effective strategy for employers. This approach aims to maximize the value of their expenditures on employee health benefits. READ MORE
Healthcare Policy, Strategy & Finance
Amory Associates was founded by Peter A. Wadsworth,
a former investment banker and financial advisor
specializing in managed healthcare,
and co-founder of the Better Healthcare Policy Group.
