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Practices varied considerably in the comprehensive primary care capabilities they adopted

• The most-commonly adopted capabilities were empanelment (92 percent of practices), same-day or next-day office visits (90 percent), and patient education and self-management support (88 percent).

The costs of comprehensive primary care capabilities ranged widely

• Medication management had the highest annual median cost per full-time-equivalent primary care practitioner (FTE PCP) ($11,496 per year), and extended hours had the lowest ($0), because the majority of practices offering extended hours did so without incurring marginal costs (i.e., they paid no overtime and had no unfilled appointment slots).

Overall findings

• The period of data collection was long (median 92 days between initial interview and practice approval of final cost estimates).
• Practices were unable to estimate patient panel sizes consistently, due to varying definitions of patient panels.
• Practice leaders expressed substantial uncertainty concerning startup costs.
• In general, cost variation among practices ostensibly providing the same comprehensive primary care capability (e.g., among the multiple practice-reported services categorized as "medication management") was at least partially attributable to differences in the level of service provided.
• However, price variation still played a role, such as when high-cost outlier practices appeared to offer the same service as lower-cost practices (e.g., because they used more expensive labor mixes).
• With a sample of 50 practices, we were unable to estimate quantitatively the relative contributions of level-of-service variation and price variation to the variation in overall costs.