Measuring Primary Healthcare Spending

Measuring Primary Healthcare Spending: The purpose of this Technical Brief is to build on these prior efforts and expand the included information, particularly as the number of State Governments producing estimates of primary care spending has grown. The focus of this brief is on comparing and contrasting the definitions, data sources, and methods used across estimates of primary care spending. Policy leaders and researchers have identified a range of primary care spending conceptualizations, developed frameworks and methods for measuring primary care spending, and documented the pros and cons of different approaches. However, these efforts have not been comprehensive, particularly as the number of estimates have grown. The authors continue this work by identifying the definitions, data sources, and approaches used to estimate primary care spending in the United States. The purpose of this Technical Brief is to build on these prior efforts and expand the included information, particularly as the number of State Governments producing estimates of primary care spending has grown. The focus of this brief is to compare and contrast the definitions, data sources, and methods used across estimates of primary care spending. The objective was to identify where there is and is not consensus across methods, and how initial steps toward a standardized approach to estimating primary care spending might be achieved. They approached this comparison from a societal economic perspective.