Our goal as the Texas Primary Care Consortium (TPCC) is to facilitate collective action to advance equitable, comprehensive, and sustainable primary care for all Texans. As we enter a new season, we would like to thank our partners who continue to help us immensely in our efforts to advance primary care across the state! Our partners’ commitment to our shared mission has played a pivotal role in the success and accomplishments we achieved in 2023. We lead with a three-pronged framework, educate, activate, and transform, to help achieve our mission.  

Educate

Last year our efforts in the educate prong of our framework included our annual convening, multiple webinars, and developing a patient-centered video. The 2023 Texas Primary Care Consortium Annual Summit celebrated its 11th year with the theme of “Creating Stronger Primary Care Together for a Healthier Texas.” The summit was a space for dialogue and collective learning. TPCC webinars educate our audience about the impact of high-quality primary care in Texas. In 2023, attendees learned about primary care policy priorities, primary care wins during the 88^th legislative session, and what’s ahead. Our video, A Vision for Primary Care: Patient Perspectives, offers firsthand accounts for viewers to learn about challenges, successes, and aspirations for primary care.

Activate

In 2023 TPCC’s efforts to activate focused on collaboration and consensus-building among local, state, and national leaders. We engaged a group of community members and leaders with expertise in firearm injury as a stakeholder group. The group examined Texas-specific data on firearm injuries and deaths and provided a better understanding of the existing programs and services that focus on the prevention of firearm injuries. Building on what the stakeholder group identified as focus areas our team developed a Firearm Data Portrait and Sue Bornstein, MD, MACP authored a blog post, Primary Care Can Advance Firearm Injury Prevention.

Transform

Our work on the transform prong of our framework focused on advancing policy and system change. In 2022, TPCC, with support from Episcopal Health Foundation and St. David’s Foundation, brought together a statewide consensus panel to identify and advance bi-partisan, smart public policy that will help increase access, reduce costs, and improve outcomes. In 2023, TPCC met with policymakers and testified for policies that advance primary care. With the expertise and guidance of our consensus panel our team developed a series of primary care policy priority one-pagers prior to the session and a one-pager highlighting primary wins during the 88^th legislative session.

Looking Ahead

As we move into 2024, our organizational goal to advance equitable, comprehensive, and sustainable primary care for all Texans remains the same. You can expect our work to continue to be driven by our framework to educate, activate, and transform.

The TPCC Monthly Monday: Primary Care Talks is a video series dedicated to interviewing guest speakers from across Texas, covering a wide range of primary care topics. Each month, TPCC will bring you an informative episode as a go-to resource to educate you on all things primary care in Texas. Our first webinar of the year, Advancing Firearm Safety and Injury Prevention, will explore the integration of firearm safety into primary care settings and highlight the role of healthcare professionals in promoting safe firearm practices. We plan to update TPCC’s Data Dashboard on the state of primary care in each county to reflect the most recent data in 2024.

Our team will continue our activate prong by building collaboration and consensus among local, state, and national leaders with a new focus on value-based payment. This year we plan to work with experts across the state and beyond to prioritize value-based payment as a strategy to advance into high-quality primary care across the state.

Our efforts to transform primary care will continue to focus on policy and system change. We will work with our statewide consensus panel to develop policy priorities for 89^th legislative session. The priorities will be organized around three categories: modernizing the Medicaid eligibility system to better access to care to eligible beneficiaries, strengthening the primary care system through measuring primary care spend using the all-payer claims database, and moving into value-based payment.

If you’re interested in helping us further our goal of facilitating collective action to advance equitable, comprehensive, and sustainable primary care for all Texans, please consider becoming a TPCC partner in 2024 and join our network by subscribing to our email list and connecting with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube!