Milbank Primary Care Networks

Milbank-supported networks of state officials, advocates, and others aiming to transform and invest in primary care.

How Does Milbank Support Primary Care Leaders?

The Milbank Memorial Fund has supported leaders promoting advanced primary care for decades. Our networks create forums for members to share data, participate in collaborative learning, and advocate for improved collaboration between the states and the federal government on new and ongoing initiatives. Today, we support two networks of primary care leaders: a Primary Care Network of State Medicaid Agencies and the Primary Care Investment Network.

Primary Care Transformation

Read Milbank publications on primary care investment, financing, training and more.

Read more

Making Care Primary Network of State Medicaid Agencies

The Milbank Memorial Fund is supporting and advising this network of State Medicaid Agencies (SMAs) at the request of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Innovation Center. We convene this group of SMA leaders participating in the Making Care Primary model monthly in a shared learning forum to work on common priorities selected by the group in order to facilitate achievement of milestones such as directional alignment on payment.

Email Us

The Primary Care Investment Network

Convened by the Primary Care Development Corporation and supported by the Commonwealth Fund and the Milbank Memorial Fund, this network comprises advocates and officials from more than 20 states who are actively pursuing policy to increase spending on primary care at the state level. The goals of the network are to: (1) Make progress in individual states, (2) Increase interaction among states that are pursuing similar goals, so that they can learn from each other, (3) Build up leadership capacity at the state level, both in and outside of government, and (4) Increase the political salience of the issue by supporting state leaders who are already interested.

Email Us

Primary Care Networks

Resource Types

Current Topics

Blog Post

Proposed Changes to How Medicare Pays Can Help Primary Care’s Chronic Condition

September 2025
Christopher F. Koller
The Trump administration released a draft Medicare rule this summer that might have been missed amid HR1’s large funding cuts to Medicaid and the health insurance marketplaces. But the administration’s proposed changes to the 2026 Medicare Physician Fee schedule are an important step toward strengthening primary care — and following through on its commitment to “Make America Healthy Again.” More

Publication

Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: A Policy Menu for States

September 2025
Christopher F. Koller, Diana Bianco, Katie Greene, Maddy Hraber and Sandra Wilkniss
This report provides state leaders with a range of policy options states can use to strengthen primary care across geopolitically diverse contexts. More

Blog Post

Harnessing the Capacity of Nurse Practitioners to Increase Access to Primary Care in Disadvantaged Communities

August 2025
Monica O’Reilly-Jacob, Kyle Featherston and Lusine Poghosyan
The number of nurse practitioners (NPs) in the United States quadrupled from 91,000 in 2007 to 431,000 in 2024. But does this remarkable growth result in improved access to primary care where it is needed most? More

Blog Post

Integrated Behavioral Health Works and Saves Money. Why Aren’t We Doing It?

May 2025
Ann M. Nguyen, Alexandra M. Williams and Stephanie Marcello
Integrated care functions as a treatment and prevention strategy, where healthy behaviors are established well before they turn into complex, expensive chronic conditions. More

Publication

Building Bridges to Value: Infrastructure Essentials for Community Health Centers

May 2025
Hope Glassberg, Henry Chung, Jordanna Davis, Adam J. Falcone and Alison Gold
This report offers community health centers, their partners, policymakers, and others a place to start in addressing challenges to implementing value-based payment models, particularly as the safety net faces potential cuts in federal funding for Medicaid. More

Blog Post

Optimizing State Policies for Primary Care Payment Reform

May 2025
Stephanie B. Gold, MD, Kyle Leggott, Sarah Hemeida, Lakshmi Karra, Apoorva Ram and Lauren S. Hughes
To inform state-level primary care payment policies, we reviewed recent policies advancing primary care payment reform in the commercial sector and conducted interviews with 50 stakeholders in five pioneering states: Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Washington. More

Publication

Foundational Values for Whole Person Health

April 2025
Hoangmai H. Pham, Wayne Jonas and Mark Smith
This brief identifies beliefs and common practices in health care culture that the authors suggest have hindered the spread of these models, as well as opportunities for the policymakers and influencers, payers, and clinicians to support whole-person health. More

Publication

Five States Leading Efforts to Increase Primary Care Spending

March 2025
Vida Foubister
This series of profiles highlights five states that are in different stages of enacting and implementing primary care spending targets, including early planning and coalition building; active efforts to engage state policymakers; and implementation or revision of an enacted state policy. More

Publication

The Health of US Primary Care: 2025 Scorecard Report — The Cost of Neglect

February 2025
Yalda Jabbarpour, Anuradha Jetty, Hoon Byun, Anam Siddiqi and Jeongyoung Park
This 2025 Primary Care Scorecard spotlights the downward cycle of financing for primary care, describing how persistent challenges in primary care arise from insufficient investment (or in the case of training, misplaced investment) and a fee-for-service (FFS) payment model that rewards volume rather than continuous, whole-person care. This report highlights how these systemic financial issues not only undermine the effectiveness of primary care delivery but, more importantly, jeopardize the overall health of our communities in the following ways. More

Publication

Lessons Learned from State Efforts to Slow and Shift Health Care Spending

February 2025
Robert Seifert, Emma Rourke and Mary Jo Condon
This report describes the experiences of states that have designed and implemented policies to pursue these multiple targets and gathers lessons from their experiences to inform future policy development. Interviews with state officials and a multi-state convening revealed the strategies states used to establish their targets and their experiences implementing them. Officials described challenges to implementation and efforts to overcome them. More