Dr Jason Mitchell Discusses the Evolving Role of Primary Care in Value-Based Care

Jason Mitchell, MD, chief medical and clinical transformation officer, Presbyterian Healthcare Services, discusses the role primary care will play in the transition to value-based care.

Transcript

What role will primary care play in the transition to value-based care and do you think this role will continue to evolve?

Primary care’s been huge in value-based care, and it’s been interesting. We started our patient-centered medical homes many, many years ago and have continued to invest in them. We have a pharmacist, a behaviorist, and care and case managers in those homes, and we do that to deliver better care for our population. I think there’s still a next iteration. We’re now looking at a patient-centered medical mome 2.0 where we really try to take the burden off of the physicians. We’ve put a lot of work in there, we’ve put a team in there, but it still can be overwhelming. So, now we’re looking at how do we move the work to the appropriate licensed individual? How do we free up the physician to really focus on the relationship they have with patients and on populations? So, we’re really re-tooling a lot of the clinical processes along with analytics.

Additionally, in the future, I think the primary care clinics are going to need more data. They can’t just be your diabetes bundle, they can’t just be your medication adherence for depression. We need much more. We need to understand who are our patients, what do they need, and how to best engage them. So, I think the data analytics will play a role in that and continue to see primary care really lead in population health and in total cost of care.