Primary Care Compendium

The Rhode Island Medical Society has developed this compendium to consolidate and streamline access to essential research and reporting on Rhode Island’s primary care system, creating a comprehensive, easy-to-navigate resource. This document is designed to inform policy development and advocacy. It is also a resource to guide strategic planning at RIMS and the larger healthcare community. It aims to identify key issues by centering clinician feedback and foster meaningful discussions on critical areas such as primary care workforce development and wellness, compensation and reimbursement models, and improving equitable patient care access and quality outcomes across Rhode Island.

This compendium is not a one-time effort. It will evolve over time as new data, policies, and stakeholder perspectives are identified and integrated, reflecting the dynamic nature of our healthcare system. By regularly updating this resource, we can provide timely, relevant information that supports healthcare providers, administrators, policymakers, and advocates as they navigate the complexities and opportunities in our healthcare landscape.

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As we developed and refine this compendium, several key areas of focus have emerged to guide our collective efforts toward strengthening Rhode Island’s primary care system: 

1. Fostering Provider Well-being: Prioritizing the mental health and well-being of our primary care providers is essential. Exploring partnerships to develop wellness programs—such as mental health services, peer support networks, and burnout prevention—will help ensure that providers are supported and resilient.
2. Addressing Compensation and Retention: Ensuring competitive compensation for primary care providers is vital for attracting and retaining talent in Rhode Island. Efforts to address low reimbursement rates, and explore salary adjustments, loan forgiveness programs, and other retention incentives will play a critical role in building a sustainable workforce.
3. Streamlining Administrative Processes: Complex and overly burdensome administrative requirements are drivers for clinician burnout and impact access to care. Eliminating or simplifying prior authorizations, increased oversight of pharmacy benefit managers, and addressing electronic health records (EHR) systems challenges are priorities to reduce the administrative load on providers. Collaborating with policymakers and payers to address these burdens will improve care and clinician experience.
4. Strengthening Training and Recruitment Efforts: Further developing innovative training models, especially those that meet the needs of learners from historically underrepresented populations, is key to Rhode Island’s primary care workforce development. Recruitment and retention of primary care providers are also crucial. By focusing on competitive compensation packages, mentorship opportunities, and flexible work environments, we can attract new talent and support early-career physicians.
5. Developing Models and Supports for Delivering Culturally and Linguistically Accessible Services (CLAS) Systemwide: The diversity of Rhode Island’s patient population is growing, but many areas of the delivery system are failing to meet the needs of these patients and their providers. The impact of cultural and linguistic barriers on access to care and patient-provider communication must be addressed to ensure equitable delivery of health care. Prioritizing efforts to recruit and retain multilingual clinical staff and integrate language support services, such as interpretation and multilingual care teams across the system of care, will enhance the patient and provider experience, and ensure more equitable access and better care outcomes for all patients.

These priorities represent key areas where targeted efforts can make a meaningful impact. By continuing to build on this foundation, the Rhode Island Medical Society will help shape a more sustainable, efficient, and patient-centered primary care system for the future. 

Key informant interviews were conducted during the summer of 2024, and the narrative sections of this document are up to date as of September 2024. Resource tables are up to date as of December 2024 and will be updated monthly during 2025. Users may also identify the most recent updates under this section on the website.

Data garnered from key informant interviews conducted with primary care providers currently practicing or who previously practiced primary care in Rhode Island provides helpful context for the desk research presented. Care was taken to engage providers across disciplines, specialties, and practice sizes and settings. Seeking informants from across the state, we also aimed to ensure gender parity and representation from providers with a diversity of length of practice. While provider participation in this work is anonymous by design, RIMS expresses gratitude to those providers who gave their valuable time and expertise to help us deepen our understanding of their experiences.

The Rhode Island Medical Society appreciates UnitedHealthcare’s investment in this work.