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 all members of the primary care team- and anyone else- who cares about the future of primary care in this country. Our network is united by a new vision for revitalizing the primary care workforce pipeline through interprofessional collaboration and strategic local advocacy that promotes primary care and transforms care delivery and training in academic settings.
We are a primary care community that brings together all members of the team.
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. Onerous scope of practice laws prevent members of the care team from operating at the top of their training 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face active discouragement, isolation, inadequate exposure to promising new models of primary care delivery, and outdated curriculum that leave them ill-prepared to work on interprofessional teams. The resulting growing shortage of high value 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 an interprofessional network of over two dozen chapters and thousands of members across the country, united by a common vision for change in how primary care is delivered and how providers are trained as well as a commitment to mobilizing an interprofessional effort 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 from the various professions and disciplines delivering primary care (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.
