About the Summit

What is the summit?

The PCC working summit will convene healthcare stakeholders to discuss the opportunities presented by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s (NASEM) report, Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care. The summit will focus on the report’s payment recommendations as a key lever to achieving the report’s goals. Achieving the goals is a way of reaching the vision of care presented in the Shared Principles of Primary Care. Our goal with the summit is to catalyze and align broad, diverse leadership in order to formulate an action plan for implementing the high-quality primary care described in the NASEM report.

The summit is an important kickoff to a coalition and campaign, led by the PCC, that will build through 2023. As the first major part of this multi-year initiative, the online working summit will provide visibility and a space for making connections and building relationships toward strengthening our coalition. The summit is also a chance to build excitement and momentum as well as to solidify support of the payment and investment reform efforts.

Unlike PCC’s annual educational conferences, the summit is being designed as a special type of event – intense working sessions over two days with influential leaders from PCC’s Executive Members and others in the healthcare community. (This event is being held in lieu of PCC’s Annual Conference in 2021.)

Goals and objectives:

  • Provide a broad, diverse group of stakeholders the opportunity to engage with the key findings and implications of the NASEM report — Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care
  • Connect the vision of high-quality primary care described in the report to stakeholders’ key policy objectives
  • Make the case that the NASEM report’s payment and investment recommendations are the key levers to achieve high-quality primary and gather input on recommended policies that could make those recommendations a reality
  • Expand engagement in the PCC of a targeted group of currently less-engaged stakeholders to strengthen support for the report’s payment and investment recommendations
  • Create an inclusive process that continues after the event to expand and strengthen the community of primary care leaders and stakeholders that come together at the PCC, united to advance shared priorities.

Who will attend the summit?

  • Participants will attend the event by invitation only.
  • All PCC Executive Members are invited.
  • Healthcare and community stakeholders, leaders who are well positioned to test the NASEM report’s payment and investment recommendations against the needs and aspirations of their communities and who can chart a course for moving forward together in a coalition for change.
  • In addition to the multiple stakeholders already represented in the PCC, we will invite representatives of rural primary care, FQHCs, disability-rights advocates, whole-person-care advocates, health-equity advocates, safety-net plans, community health workers, social workers, primary care at home, and technology leaders focused on primary care.
  • Thought leaders and policymakers
  • Total of 100 participants, not including speakers/presenters, staff and funders

When and where is the summit?

November 9-10, 2021

Start and end times of the summit each day:

  • November 9: 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. ET
  • November 10: 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. ET

Within these times, there will be plenary sessions, breakout discussions, and breaks. More details on the schedule and agenda will be provided to registered attendees soon.

All parts of the summit will be held online using a web-based, easy-to-use event and networking program. (The summit was originally planned as an in-person event, but due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the PCC decided to hold the entire summit online.)

Why are we holding a summit?

The current environment presents a historic policy window for primary care:

  • recognition during the COVID-19 pandemic of primary care’s value and vulnerability
  • Increasing focus on health equity at all levels of government
  • increasing recognition of primary care as the solution to enhancing value by employers, health plans and primary care/private equity
  • While primary care as a sector is weaker, almost half (46%) of primary care clinicians want to move away from the majority fee-for-service payment system.
  • the report of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care, a bold call to action, released in May, which was favorably received

All of these factors combine to underscore the importance of primary care. In addition, primary care is viewed positively by both national political parties, particularly when positioned as the foundation of a high-value health system.

The PCC is the only national multi-stakeholder organization focused on primary care, with a track record of bridging divides and broadening perspectives within its big tent. As such, the PCC wants to use its role as a convener and leader in the primary community to bring together its current members and other key healthcare and patient-oriented stakeholders to chart a course for moving forward together in a coalition for change. PCC’s policy agenda for more than three years has focused on changing how we pay – primary care payment reform – and how much we pay – primary care investment – to achieve the seven Shared Principles of Primary Care. With many partners we’ve achieved gains at the state level; it is now time to turn our sights to federal action.

How will the summit be implemented?

  • This will be a participatory/working meeting.
  • The agenda will be built around the NASEM report findings and recommendations, with a focus on:
    • the link between comprehensive care models and the associated payment models with investment that can best support and sustain them
    • the policies that can make those recommendations a reality
  • The agenda will be heavy on small-group (10 participants) breakout sessions in two tracks:
    • Care model case studies
    • Role of payment type and levels, data collection, quality measures, and health plan and program features and factors in producing care models that are accountable to diverse communities
  • The agenda will also consider the array of policy options that can move the report’s recommendations forward and provide a forum to gather input on these options.

PCC Awards

The PCC recognizes excellence in primary care every year with three awards. These awards are announced and presented to the recipients traditionally at a dinner held during the PCC’s annual educational conference. The annual conference won’t be held this year, and the in-person summit that was originally planned in its place will be held online. Therefore, the awards will be presented at various times during the course of the online summit’s two days through video presentations.

With its annual awards, the PCC recognizes distinguished leaders and innovators of primary care who have helped shape the field. The awards are:

  • The Barbara Starfield Primary Care Leadership Award (given to an individual)
  • The Primary Care Community Leadership/Research Award (given to an individual)
  • The Advanced Primary Care Practice Award