Overview

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Primary Care First is a voluntary alternative five-year payment model that rewards value and quality by offering an innovative payment structure to support the delivery of advanced primary care. In response to input from primary care clinician stakeholders, Primary Care First is based on the principles underlying the existing Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+) model design: prioritizing the clinician-patient relationship; enhancing care for patients with complex chronic needs, and focusing financial incentives on improved health outcomes.

 

Primary Care First aims to improve quality, improve patient experience of care, and reduce expenditures. CMS believes that the model will achieve these aims by increasing patient access to advanced primary care services. PCF has elements specifically designed to support practices caring for patients with complex chronic needs or serious illness. The specific approaches to care delivery are determined by practice priorities. Practices are incentivized to deliver patient-centered care that reduces acute hospital utilization or total per capita cost. PCF is oriented around five comprehensive primary care functions:

1. Access and continuity;

2. Care management;

3. Comprehensiveness and coordination;

4. Patient and caregiver engagement; and

5. Planned care and population health.

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Above excerpted from Primary Care First | CMS Innovation Center

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