Building Momentum to Measure Primary Care Spending

How much of our health care dollars actually go toward supporting primary care, which is consistently acknowledged to be key to improving population health?  Some states are working toward an answer.

“At the Fund, we are working to increase policy focus on primary care spending,” said Rachel Block, Fund program officer. “It’s a good measure of how oriented a health system is to primary care, prevention, and population health. It’s also a good measure of whether we’re moving in the right direction in terms of payment reform. We need primary care spending measures to determine if the various alternate payment mechanisms being implemented are, in fact, providing more support for primary care.”