Session Description: The Massachusetts Health Policy Commission (HPC) report from January 2025 was titled, "A Dire Diagnosis: The Declining Health of Primary Care in Massachusetts and the Urgent Need for Action." This Special Report focused on Primary Care Workforce and access. Despite being one of the highest-value categories of care, primary care represents a declining share of health care spending in Massachusetts. Primary care provision faces significant challenges in Massachusetts: growing rates of residents reporting difficulty accessing care and a small share of new physicians entering primary care. On the sunny side, we have a significant number of Advanced Practice Providers (APP) who seek careers in Primary Care. Many APP come to Lynn Community Health Center (LCHC) to leverage medicine for social justice, but the learning curve is steep, the patients are complex, and there are not strong support systems in place to set a foundation for APP to thrive. LCHC reviewed our provider burnout data and made the decision to invest in a preceptorship. Our preceptorship provides 20 hours per week for a new APP to precept patient cases with a Preceptor. The Preceptor has a reduced patient schedule to allow for APP to discuss clinical care during the daily work. Our preceptorship has 4 key elements: Primary Care, Pediatrics, GYN, and Suboxone. The Preceptee has a ramp up schedule to slowly increase patient volume over 9 months. By investing more time and energy during the first 9 months, we are able to retain excellent talent for the years to come
Learning Objectives:
Leverage feedback from my Medical Providers to explore what a preceptorship might look like at my organization
Design a preceptorship that focuses on the key needs of my Medical Providers
Create tools that assess the preceptorship learning and continued value over time
