Primary care could be coming to more than 30 CVS locations across the state under a proposed contracting affiliation between Mass General Brigham and CVS MinuteClinic.
Last week, the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission’s board voted to initiate a cost and market impact review of the proposal, which would create 37 MinuteClinic Primary Care locations located within CVS retail stores where limited acute care is currently staffed by nurse practitioners.
Under the proposal, approximately 80 MinuteClinic “primary care advanced practice providers” would manage panels of 1,500 patients each, creating capacity to serve 120,000 adult primary care patients statewide.
Read more: Why your local pharmacy might be the next to disappear as Massachusetts has lost nearly 300 since 2010
MinuteClinic Primary Care is proposing to join Mass General Brigham’s accountable care organization as an affiliated provider organization. An accountable care organization is typically defined as a group of health care providers who coordinate care for a designated group of patients.
The arrangement would offer Mass General Brigham patients in-network primary care at the CVS locations.
CVS said its new model “represents a strategic evolution of MinuteClinic’s care model – from episodic, urgent care to comprehensive longitudinal primary care.”
Since the proposal was filed, the state’s Health Policy Commission has determined the affiliation “is likely to have a significant impact on spending and the health care market in Massachusetts,” and decided to initiate a cost and market impact review.
The primary care sites would require full clinic licensure from the Department of Public Health.
Massachusetts faces an ongoing primary care crisis. A report published earlier this year by the Health Policy Commission said fewer physicians are going into primary care and many are exiting the profession altogether or retiring. Some primary care practices currently have thousands of people on their waitlists.
