Primary care is essential for better health and wellbeing in the U.S. health care system and should be foundational to all health care systems worldwide (WHO, 2008) (IOM, 1994) (Starfield, 1992). Access to high-quality primary care can help people live longer, feel better, and avoid disability (Commonwealth Fund, 2013).
Primary care has experienced significant changes in the way it is organized, financed and delivered in response to greater demand for high-quality services, rising health care costs, and increasing burden of disease across populations (Bitton et al 2016). Concepts such as the Patient Centered Medical Home emerged to describe a more advanced model of primary care. Based on lessons learned over the past decade and the continued rapid pace of change, the time is right to revisit the future of primary care.
Realizing the ideal vision of primary care occurs faster when all stakeholders can speak with one voice. These Shared Principles—developed by stakeholders representing all aspects of health care—describe an aspirational vision of primary care. They “focus on the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of primary care: principles that define what individuals, families, and the public should expect of primary care, and for which primary care practices should be accountable” (Epperly et al, 2019). They do not address the ‘how’, including payment and operations. With chronic underinvestment and a dire workforce shortage in primary care, good policy and fundamental systems change will be vital to achieving them.
The Shared Principles are designed to move the United States toward a vibrant future of person- centered, team-based, community-aligned primary care that will help achieve the goals of better health, better care, and lower costs. Achieving this future requires a common vision as well as appropriate payment, investment, training, workforce and other resources to support it.
In 2016, the Primary Care Collaborative, FMAHealth and many cross-sector partners sought to “define the enduring essence and value of primary care”. Through an intensive multistakeholder consensus-building process, our community developed the Shared Principles of Primary Care that identify seven core attributes of primary care at its best.
Over 2024, PCC embarked on an iterative review and revision process with its Workgroup on Whole-Person Primary Care, followed by conversations with PCC’s Policy and Advocacy Committee and Board organizations. PCC’s Board voted to approve the updated Shared Principles in December, 2024.
More than 380 organizations have endorsed the Seven Shared Principles of Primary Care.
Primary care is focused on the whole person – their physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual well-being, as well as cultural, linguistic and social needs.
Dynamic, trusted, respectful and enduring relationships between individuals, families and their clinical team members are hallmarks of primary care.
Primary care addresses the whole person with appropriate clinical and supportive services that include acute, chronic and preventive care, behavioral and mental health, oral health, health promotion and more.
Interdisciplinary teams, including individuals and families, work collaboratively and dynamically toward a common goal. The services they provide and the coordinated manner in which they work together are synergistic to better health.
Primary care integrates the activities of those involved in an individual’s care, across settings and services. Primary care proactively communicates across the spectrum of care and collaborators, including individuals and their families/care partners.
Primary care is readily accessible, both in person and virtually for all individuals regardless of linguistic, literacy, socioeconomic, cognitive or physical barriers.
Primary care achieves excellent, equitable outcomes for individuals and families, including using health care resources wisely and considering costs to patients, payers and the system.
Sign up for PCC’s newsletter to get the latest updates about the PCC, Better Health – NOW and our efforts to build a more effective health care system centered on primary care.