Among the recommendations of a Massachusetts task force are the establishment of a primary care spending target for the Commonwealth and the development of an advanced primary care payment model that would be available to all primary care practices.

This month the Massachusetts Primary Care Access, Delivery, and Payment Task Force recommended a spending target that is equivalent to either (1) doubling the share of healthcare spending on primary care as a percentage of total healthcare spending or 15%, whichever is greater, within the next five years.
 
The advanced primary care payment model would be available to all primary care practices in Massachusetts and provide a prospective, capitated per member per month (PMPM) payment to primary care practices for a specified set of services and support enhanced care delivery capabilities.

The report states that the advanced primary care model should provide additional payment for primary care practices that maintain or improve high quality and outcome performance and should support practices to enhance care delivery capabilities, including team-based care, with an approach that allows payers and primary care practices to innovate and adapt as needed for their unique circumstances and patient population.

The report also recommends that the Legislature require that the advanced primary care payment model be implemented across all payers subject to
state jurisdiction. 

Other recommendations include:
• Create additional transparency and oversight of the flow of primary care payments within health systems to verify that at least 90-95% of payments in the advanced model are supporting primary care practices. 
• Continue efforts to improve healthcare affordability, including addressing the burden of cost sharing and underlying growth in health care spending, and promote health plan benefit designs that minimize barriers to primary care, are consumer-friendly, and are less burdensome for providers. 
• Leverage the Health Policy Commission’s Office of Health Resource Planning to conduct assessments of primary care need, supply, capacity, and utilization to help ensure that new primary care investments are targeted to the geographies and communities with greatest unmet need.
• Codify the Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA) as the agency responsible for defining, measuring, and reporting on primary care spending, require that CHIA publicly post its methodology and data specifications, and establish a new primary care technical advisory body to provide technical input on CHIA’s data specifications, methodology, measurement, and reporting.