On May 3, 2010, Hope Street Group convened our Bipartisan Working Group of business, political and civic sector leaders to address the urgent need to reinvent primary care.  The Working Group looked at opportunities to maximize innovation in addressing resource shortages and acute, preventative, and chronic care delivery.

Once again, Hope Street Group leveraged the tremendous expertise and knowledge base of our community of advisors.  Participating in the discussions on the night were:

Byron Auguste | Director, McKinsey & Company

Dr. Sree Chaguturu | Attending Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital; Manager, McKinsey & Company

Aaron Doty | Health Care Advisor, Hope Street Group

Susan Edgman-Levitan, PA | Executive Director ,The John D. Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation, Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr. Paul Grundy, MPH | IBM's Global Director of Healthcare Transformation; President, Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative

Dr. Jeff Harris | Former President, American College of Physicians

Dr. Matthew Hunsaker | Director, RMED, National Center for Rural Health Professions, University of Illinois, College of Medicine at Rockford

David Javdan | Manager Director, Alvarez & Marsal, LLC;

Dr. Bob Kocher | Special Assistant to the President, National Economic Council

Peter Lee | Executive Director, National Health Policy Pacific Business Group on Health

Monique Nadeau | Executive Director, Hope Street Group

John Podesta | CEO, Center for American Progress

Diane Rowland, ScD | Executive Vice President, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation; Chair, MACPAC

Andy Slavitt | CEO, Ingenix

Simon Stevens | Executive Vice President, UnitedHealth Group

Dr. Kate Tulenko | Deputy Director, CapacityPlus (USAID)

David Walker | President and CEO, Peter Peterson Foundation

Dr. Steven Weinberger, FACP | Deputy Executive Vice President, Senior Vice President for Medical Education & Publishing American College of Physicians

Participants considered the impact of the lack of a coordinated market in primary care, and the impediments to take up of innovation. They discussed the way in which geographic distribution and variation in the distribution of types of practitioners exacerbates the impact of workforce shortage in primary care.  They also looked at how other players in the complex health care market may react when changes to primary care begin to take effect.  Participants agreed that it was important to address the barriers to the spread of innovation (including drawing on the experiences of other countries), rather than duplicating the efforts of existing innovation leaders.

You can view a copy of the full Executive Summary here.

On December 15, 2009, Hope Street Group brought together an impressive group of major stakeholders in health care reform to continue discussing some of the most pressing issues in health care reform. Over the last 18 months, the Bipartisan Working Group has tackled some of the toughest and most important issues in health care reform such as cost, quality, and access. This last dinner shifted gears a bit and focused issues regarding current legislation and implementation as well as issues outside of legislation, such as revitalizing primary care.

You can find the full executive summary of the dinner here, however here are some key points from the primary care discussion for you all to ponder:

• The notion that physicians are not going into primary care due to high levels of medical school debt is a fallacy. Since physicians training at military medical schools without any medical school debt still don’t go into primary care.

• The primary care issue focuses on improving the supply of primary care physicians and does not place a strong enough focus on increasing quality care for patients. This needs to be turned around and thought in terms of how to best address the needs of primary care patients.

• Primary care is not just about the physician shortage. We need to look at expanding the role of nurses, especially in chronic disease management. There is a real opportunity here to improve efficiency and quality.

• Medical schools need to stop basing all of their residency training in tertiary centers (specialty hospitals) which biases students toward specialties over primary care since primary care seems less intellectually satisfying.

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