Less AND More Are Needed to Assess Primary Care

Abstract

Significant federal investment is now being directed toward lessening the burden of clinical quality measurement; at the same time, there is growing recognition that current measures are inadequate to capture the domains of primary care that result in improved person and population health at sustainable cost. Our study reveals a significant gap between the universe of what is measured and those elements most critical to good quality primary care, indicating that the important efforts to reduce measurement burden must be accompanied by efforts to increase the relevance of measures to domains of care that affect patient-centered and community health outcomes.

Keywords: Community Health Care; Patient-centered Care; Primary Health Care.