Creating a National Scorecard on Primary Care – Implementing the NASEM Report

Context The recent National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) report entitled Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care called for action to build a strong primary care system to achieve national and individual health outcome goals. The NASEM report included a list of implementation recommendations aimed at improving the national investment in primary care. One of the recommendations was an annual national scorecard on primary care to include a parsimonious collection of primary care measures that are readily available at the national and state.

Objective: We report on the development of a national scorecard on primary care based on the NASEM report.

Study Design/Setting/Data/Population/Measures: Descriptive, secondary data analysis. Based on an in-depth review of available measures and data, and the NASEM Report recommendations 5 objectives and 17 measures were chosen.

Results: 5 main objectives proposed by the NASEM Report. 17 individual measures. 1) Pay for primary care teams to care for people, not doctors to deliver services. 2) Ensure that high-quality primary care is available to every family in every community. 3)Train primary care teams where people live and work. 4)Design information technology that serves patients, their families, and the interprofessional primary care team. 5)Ensure that high-quality primary care is implemented in the United States. Full description of each measure, data source and analytic plan will be described.

Conclusion: We can change what we can measure. The national scorecard on primary care will provide an opportunity to identify state and national policy levers to improve primary care payment, access, training, health IT, and research.