About Primary Care Progress

Who Is PCP?

PCP is Primary Care Progress.  We’re a 501 (c)(3) national nonprofit-  a growing network of medical providers, health professional trainees, policy pundits, advocates, and educators.  We are a home to everyone under the primary care umbrella- and anyone else-  who cares about the future of primary care in this country.    Our members are united by a new vision for revitalizing the primary care workforce pipeline through strategic local advocacy that promotes primary care and transforms care delivery and training in academic settings.  

We are a primary care community. 
We are a platform for spreading a reinvigorated vision of primary care.
We are a grassroots approach to primary care transformation.
We are the future of primary care. 

Interested in learning how we are working to bring primary care to a new level?  Listen to our members talk about the value of PCP in their own words. 



The Challenge

Our current health care system is failing us. Care is too often disorganized, uncoordinated, and error-prone; payment systems reward volume, not value; and our patient-provider interactions are often confined to 15-minute encounters that leave neither patient nor provider satisfied. There is wide agreement that patient-centered primary care is essential to fixing our broken health care system, but the primary care workforce pipeline faces huge challenges. In addition to unprecedented levels of educational debt and a reimbursement system that has devalued primary care services, our trainees also frequently face active discouragement, isolation, inadequate exposure to promising new models of primary care delivery, and outdated curriculum that further dissuade them from pursuing primary care careers. The resulting growing shortage of primary care services will only make it more difficult for patients to get the care they want and need.
 
Interested in learning how we fit into the big picture of primary care transformation?  Check out our video "On a Mission to Transform Primary Care"
  

Primary Care Progress: On a Mission to Transform Primary Care

Our Story

PCP was born in the context of a 2009 announcement at Harvard Medical School that the school’s Primary Care Division was going to be defunded. The move immediately sparked a grassroots campaign to convene the entire primary care community to work with medical school leaders around a new vision for primary care training.  This spirited collaboration, mobilized by a group of students, residents and faculty, led to the new Center for Primary Care at Harvard, as well as the formation of Primary Care Progress.  In less than two years, PCP has grown to a network of over a dozen chapters and over a thousand members across the country, all united by a common vision for change- in how primary care is delivered and how providers are trained- and a commitment to mobilizing our individual and collective power to accelerate that change. 

Our Approach
 
While a top-down approach might bring about change in primary care,  PCP believes in the value of a direct grassroots approach that empowers those individuals and groups on the frontlines of primary care delivery and training.   Our approach employs a field-organizing model that engages clinicians, trainees and educators across the primary care spectrum of Family Medicine, Pediatrics and Internal Medicine.  Our national team works with this diverse group of primary care supporters- providing them with advocacy training, leadership development, media attention , tools and strategic support to help them reach their goals.

We’re seeing tremendous movement.  PCP members around the country are initiating powerful efforts in local academic communities to promote the importance of primary care, expose trainees to the promise and excitement of new models of primary care delivery, and advance primary care education reform initiatives. Trainees are playing a critical role in these local efforts, bringing leadership, skills, passion, and optimism to the mix.   See it for yourself.   Watch PCP members bringing innovative apporaches  to primary care in our video series, "Stories of Innovation."  Or check out a slideshow of some of the PCP chapters in action:
 



Change is HERE. The future of primary care has arrived.
 
It’s up to all of us, working TOGETHER, to continue to build a primary care system we can all be proud of.
 
Join the movement for primary care today. 



NEWS!  We're hiring a National Field Organizer and Content and Community Manager!  Click here to find out more and apply.

Our Members


Our members really make Primary Care Progress what it is. Learn more about them here.




Become a member of Primary Care Progress to join the conversation!  (It's free!)

  • Connect with a national network of trainees, clinicians, and patients.
  • Access the members-only updates; primary care policy, education, and delivery; and find mentors and mentees locally and nationwide.
  • Attend webinars or conferences.
  • Share your stories and successes through Primary Care Progress Notes blog.
  • Receive our monthly newsletter, PCP in Practice.
  • Receive the quarterly Primary Care Insight journal.