A Call for Accountability: Organizational Primary Care Metrics

Dr. Laura Hahn writes in a recent edition of Health Affairs about her decision to step back from practicing. She tried hard to find a way to make part-time practice work, but in the end could not find a fit. In her article, she relays the difficulties she and many other PCPs face and suggests a way to make things better—holding health systems and organizations accountable for primary care metrics that would assuage the major drivers of primary care physician turnover such as poor EHR usability, administrative burden, and time-limited visits with patients.

Dr. Hahn notes the lack of organizational performance measures, financial incentives, or regulations to ensure that health systems, corporations, private equity firms, and vertically integrated insurers make meaningful investments in infrastructure and digital health to support primary care. She suggests a host of actions that organizations could take that would promote a more robust primary care physician workforce:

  • Organizational performance measures to reflect investments in primary care linked to burden reduction including:
    • Primary care physician retention
    • Staff retention
    • EHR usage after clinic hours
    • Time allotted to patients in the exam room with their doctor

  • Organizational investment in digital health to offload tasks normally absorbed by primary care physicians, including:
    • Artificial intelligence (AI)
    • Scribes to streamline documentation
    • Remote patient monitoring tools
    • Virtual form completion
    • Virtual staff

As we all strive for a better future, it is also important to recognize the many providers who face challenges and keep going.  This compelling retrospective by Dr. Whitney Rowe describes the experience of another physician as she strives to continue practicing and trying to meet the needs of the patients she serves.  Both perspectives reflect lived experience, are valid, and important data points as we work to provide primary care with the resources and teams necessary for succeeding in supporting patients.