The Joint Legislative Committee on Health Care Provider Practice Sustainability and Training/Additional Transparency in Health met on Monday, Dec. 16, to educate themselves as they begin studying ways to enhance health care provider training, recruitment and retention in order to increase access to care in North Carolina.

Representing the North Carolina Medical Society Foundation, Melanie Phelps, associate executive director and deputy general counsel, told the legislators about the Foundation’s Community Practitioner Program (CPP), which will celebrate it’s 25 anniversary year in 2014. The committee focused on the CPP as a successful, privately funded effort to increase access to health care in the state. Review the meeting agenda and handouts, including Melanie’s presentation here.

A common theme among the presenters, including those from the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, the Office of Rural Health and Community Care and representatives from the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University and UNC-School of Medicine, was that our health care delivery system needs to move to reimbursement based on value not volume; and that integration and coordinated, team-based care is key to transforming health care and providing better access across the state.

Training and rewarding health care professionals with these principles in mind is central to enhanced training, recruitment and retention, the presenters told the committee.