The DPC Coalition and American Academy of Family Physicians spent two years in collaboration with Milliman and the Society of Actuaries on a comprehensive evaluation of Direct Primary Care (DPC) as a growing health care delivery and financing model. The full report was published last week by the Society of Actuaries as a part of their ongoing research on health care cost trends. The Society of Actuaries report shows how the new and growing DPC financing and delivery model provides an alternative to traditional fee-for-service-based primary care, improving the patient-doctor relationship, reducing the fragmentation of patient care, as well as personal and professional satisfaction for PCPs.  

This important research shines new actuarially sound light on how DPC generates system wide reductions in unnecessary health care utilization such as hospitalization, emergency department usage, radiology and certain diagnostics, and specialist care, leading to broad-based health care cost savings. “Primary care physicians (PCPs) are the front line of health care,” the report concludes.  “How often a patient accesses primary care, and the quality of that care, can have significant impacts on downstream costs and patient health outcomes.”  However, the study concludes, “while PCPs are almost universally acknowledged as essential to achieving the health care Triple Aim of providing high-quality care, at lower cost,” the current state of primary care as being in crisis characterized by physician burnout, large patient panels, and low pay for PCPs relative to other physician specialties with increased administrative burden and longer work hours.