5 Questions: A Discussion with Primary Care Expert, Marci Nielsen

This month the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative (PCPCC) released their annual report, The Patient-Centered Medical Home’s Impact on Cost and Quality: Annual Review of Evidence, highlighting the cost and quality impact of patient-centered medical home initiatives throughout the country. We talked with PCPCC’s CEO, Dr. Marci Nielsen about the report’s key findings, how medical home initiatives have evolved over time, and her expectations for the medical home in 2016.

1. This is your fifth year of the report — what surprised you most about this year’s results?

The report evolves substantially with each edition. This year, we summarized the latest PCMH evidence within the context of payment reform, and we were pleased, although not surprised, about the results coming out of multi-payer PCMH initiatives. They clearly made a greater impact on outcomes than single payer programs. Another finding that may surprise some is the diversity in payment arrangements that are being tested to support and sustain the PCMH across various markets. That said, the evidence does not yet clearly point to a single payment strategy that is most successful in delivering advanced primary care.