Whole-Person Care Starts Here: The Promise of Advanced Primary Care
Employers are facing increasing pressure to manage rising healthcare costs while improving employee health and productivity. Advanced Primary Care (APC) offers a high-value solution—going beyond traditional care models to deliver proactive, coordinated, and data-driven care that improves outcomes and reduces downstream costs.
In this webinar, our panel of healthcare and employee benefits experts share proven strategies to maximize health outcomes while minimizing costs through Advanced Primary Care. Here are key takeaways from their discussion.
Key Insight #1: What is Advanced Primary Care (APC)?
Convenient, Comprehensive, and Cost-Effective Care
Advanced Primary Care (APC) isn’t just an individual provider. It requires a comprehensive team-based approach including Primary Care, Health Coaching, Mental Health, and Musculoskeletal Care. The model must be convenient with flexible in-person and virtual delivery options. Success depends on the entire team working cost-effectively towards shared outcomes while measuring both clinical results and financial impact. When evaluating APC providers, ask about active collaboration between the Care Team members and ensure you understand the financial incentives built into the payment model.
Key Insight #2: Why it Works
Removing Access Barriers While Improving Health Outcomes and ROI
True APC addresses massive time barriers and waste in traditional healthcare through improved access, value-based payment models, and patient experience. Timely access to quality clinical care directly impacts outcomes, while strong patient-provider relationships increase engagement with care. Success metrics provide measurable ways to evaluate preventive screenings, population health improvements, Primary Care utilization, and condition management, as well as see cost reductions in avoidable ER / Urgent Care visits alongside better chronic condition care management and pharmacy spend. APC delivers measurable ROI when implemented correctly with proper clinical performance standards and aligned payment incentives.
Key Insight #3: What Enables Success?
APC Allows Providers to Focus on Relationships Over Volume
APC must focus on provider-patient relationships and comprehensive care management that views patients as whole people, not a collection of symptoms or diseases. This requires a value-based biopsychosocial model rather than a traditional fee-for-service biomedical approach. Managing complex chronic conditions demands understanding patient behaviors and having a team of providers who can collaborate effectively. Value-based care models align incentives for high-quality, cost-effective outcomes across the entire Care Team. The approach allows providers to deliver the care they want to provide while achieving better health outcomes for their communities.
Key insight #4: Which Measurements Matter
Engagement, Clinical Outcomes, and Cost
Success metrics should show increased patient engagement, improved access rates, and demonstrable clinical improvements over time. Employer-based care offers an excellent starting point for APC implementation with significant cost benefits for employers and their employees. Partnering with providers willing to enter into value-based arrangements helps align incentives for better care delivery. This measurement-based approach ensures organizations actually receive true APC value, which has never been achievable with traditional care models.
Key insight #5: How to Implement
Remove Cost Barriers and Maximize Convenience
Successful APC implementation requires strategic engagement from benefits leaders who are willing to see through a comprehensive strategy over several years. The foundation is created by offering APC through onsite, nearsite, or virtual care channels with minimal copays and same- or next-day access. Employer policies and culture should support employees using these services during work hours, potentially using an “opt-out” model for maximum participation. It’s crucial to help employees understand how APC differs from traditional Primary Care counterfeits that don’t produce the same level of engagement, trusted relationships, or health outcomes. Employers need to communicate and employees need to understand the personal benefits—ease of access, ongoing relationship with a Care Team, cost-effectiveness—and ultimately, experience the impact of higher care quality.
Host and Speakers:
- Moderator: Scott Shreeve, MD – Chief Executive Officer at Crossover Health
- Panelist: Stephen Ezeji-Okoye, MD, Panelist – Chief Medical Officer at Crossover Health
- Panelist: Dena Bravata, MD, MS
- Panelist: Melissa Hogan, Senior Vice President at Aon