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The healthcare industry is laser focused on improving the quality of patient care while simultaneously lowering cost. It has become increasingly clear that a system built upon a strong primary care foundation is critical to achieving these goals. Delivering high-quality, efficient, patient-centered care begins with a primary care system that can effectively manage the health of patient populations. The need to effectively manage the health of populations is largely driven by the fact that 5 percent of the population accounts for 50 percent of healthcare costs.1 Being able to identify these patients, provide high-quality care and reduce their utilization is a pressing goal for many of today’s primary care providers (PCPs). Because managing populations of patients requires a much more proactive approach to delivering care than simply focusing on patients as they present at the PCP’s office, the move to population health management can increase a PCP’s patient panel by several orders of magnitude. At the same time, the industry faces a shortage of PCPs to meet that demand. A 2008 report by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) projected that the shortage of primary care physicians will reach 65,800 by 2025.2 Organizations are seeking ways to help PCPs increase the size of their patient panel without overburdening themselves — whil