An effective primary care workforce is essential to better health and health care for all

Many primary care practices struggle to provide high-quality care to their patients. There simply isn’t enough time in the day for busy providers to meet all their patients’ needs. 

When all aspects of a patient’s care depend on a single provider, it can have a negative impact on both care quality and practice productivity — and can also contribute to an inefficient and stressful work environment. Furthermore, provider-dependent practices have difficulty providing the full range of services that improve patient outcomes, such as care coordination or more intensive follow up for high-risk patients.

Strong evidence indicates that primary care practices should move to a team-based model of care, where care teams explicitly share responsibility for a defined group of patients and have systems to support a team-based approach. Developing effective care teams means expanding roles, providing training, developing trust and teamwork, and using standing orders so staff can act independently. When clinicians and staff work together, a practice is better able to meet patients’ needs, can often increase its capacity to see more patients and can maintain a more satisfied workforce. Building on decades of experience observing and developing high-performing teams in the MacColl Center for Health Care Innovation, the ACT Center continues our work to better understand and inform the state of the art in high-functioning primary care teams.  

Learn more about our work to advance team-based care

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