Addressing the primary care workforce crisis

Our nation’s primary care system is in crisis. As medical homes and accountable care organizations increasingly rely on a strong primary care workforce, the shortage of primary care physicians now calls for more policy attention and urgency. In the spirit of the 2014 Institute of Medicine recommendations on graduate medical education (GME) funding, we propose that CMS explicitly reward teaching hospitals if a certain share of their graduates (we propose 30%) remain in primary care 3 years after residency, either through additional payments or release of a withhold. Such a policy could allow hospitals to retain GME funding at a time when continued federal subsidization of GME is being called into question. Moreover, hospitals stand to benefit from producing primary care physicians, both under traditional fee-for-service contracts that reward volume through referrals and, especially, under risk contracts that reward for greater numbers of covered lives.