Cover: Primary Care Spending in the Fee-for-Service Medicare Population

Primary Care Spending in the Fee-for-Service Medicare Population

Published in: JAMA Internal Medicine (2019). doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2018.8747

Posted on RAND.org on April 17, 2019

by Rachel O. Reid, Cheryl L. Damberg, Mark W. Friedberg

Greater health system orientation toward primary care is associated with higher quality, better outcomes, and lower costs. Recent payment and delivery system reforms emphasize investment in primary care, but resources presently devoted to primary care have not been estimated nationally. In this study, we calculated primary care spending as a proportion of total spending among Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries and describe variation by beneficiary characteristics and by state.

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