Foundational Collective Actions for Achieving Agile High-Quality Primary Care in the United States

In 2021, the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Implementing High-Quality Primary Care published its recommendations to expand the provision of high-quality primary care in the USA. These include paying for primary care teams to care for people, ensuring that high-quality primary care is available, training primary care teams where people live and work, and designing information technology that serves the patient, family, and care team. Many of these recommendations echo those of prior calls for action, including the Institute of Medicine’s 1996 report. However, the 2021 report recognizes the importance of implementation in its final recommendation of ensuring that high-quality primary care is implemented in the USA. We consider the NASEM recommendations in terms of the complexity of the task of supporting interconnected implementation activities that occur in local contexts. With this vantage point, we identify foundational collective actions, including the creation of an accountable leadership entity, payment reform, and community networks. We then discuss the creation of a monitoring mechanism to assess and support sustained action.

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