Optimizing Primary Care Model Design to Improve Performance

COVID-19 has providers planning for seismic operational and financial shifts. Right now, providers’ staffing plans need to focus on ensuring that a sufficient ratio of clinical and non-clinical staff are deployed to support an overwhelmed delivery system. While shortages of physicians, clinicians and staff are likely to occur in various subspecialties over the next few months, keeping staff healthy, both in mind and body, should be of the utmost importance.

Given the current situation, you may reserve to read this white paper at a later time; however, downloading it today provides access to the analysis Premier^® performed that found wide variation in physician practice staffing models and productivity, as well as opportunities for improvement.

Leveraging its robust database of detailed physician practice information, Premier pinpointed variation across staffing models and found that under fee-for-service payment:

• Skill mix is not a predictor of provider productivity.
• Medical assistant-only models may be the most cost-effective option for practices that are fee-for-service revenue based.
• The highest performing models have a larger number of support staff per provider.