Exploring Attributes of High-Value Primary Care.

Purpose: Medicare's merit-based incentive payment system and narrowing of physician networks by health insurers will stoke clinicians' and policy makers' interest in care delivery attributes associated with value as defined by payers.

Methods: To help define these attributes, we analyzed 2009 to 2011 commercial health insurance claims data for more than 40 million preferred provider organization patients attributed to over 53,000 primary care practice sites. We identified sites ranking favorably on both quality and low total annual per capita health care spending ("high-value") and sites ranking near the median ("average-value").