You Spoke, We're Listening! The NCAFP Strategic Plan Revised to Reflect Results of Needs Assessment

November 13, 2024

By Greg Griggs, MPA, CAE

NCAFP Exec. VP and CEO

 

After closely examining the results of our Member Needs Assessment survey from earlier this year, the NCAFP Board of Directors recently updated the organization’s Strategic Plan. While the direction of the plan did not change greatly, your feedback allowed even greater focus and precision for our activities going forward. Approximately 20% of our active practicing members responded to the extensive survey, with additional feedback from residents.

So, what did you tell us? The survey first provided more insight on who you are, where you practice, and how you practice. For example:

• The membership of the NCAFP is almost evenly split between male and female family physicians.
• Over half our members (54%) now work for a health system or academic institution, while only 26% work in private practices.
• The large majority of our members participate in some type of value-based payment model.
• Roughly one in three predicted a change in their practice setting within the next three years, up 10% since our last survey in 2021.
• Your scope of practice seems to be — at least somewhat — defined by your practice setting. Our academic physicians generally reported the broadest scope, while our other health system-employed physicians reported a narrower scope, with fewer providing child and maternal health, adolescent health, and procedures.
• 68% of our members precept some type of health care professional, from residents to medical students to nurse practitioner (NP) or physician assistant (PA) students. But of those who precept, 75% receive no dedicated time or reduced responsibilities when teaching.

We also asked a lot of questions about your pain points in practice. When asked which market factors you think will impact Family Medicine over the next three years, you were most concerned over the increased use of NPs and PAs in clinical care (50% named it as a top-three concern), practice and health system consolidation (38%), and adjusting to value-based payments (35%).

When asked about what would impact the Family Medicine workforce over the next three years, you consistently reported two items:

• Physicians leaving the practice of medicine due to increasing administrative burden (mentioned in the top three issues by 85% of respondents).
• Maintaining work-life balance (mentioned by 77% of respondents).

When asked about your top causes of frustration, you repeatedly pointed out three issues:

• Administrative burdens caused by payers (49%).
• Undervaluing family medicine (34%).
• Recruiting and retaining staff (31%).

Finally, when we asked you what you thought our state-level advocacy priorities should be, you most often identified the following:

• Increasing payment or greater investment in primary care (78% selected it in the top three issues).
• Reducing administrative burden (76%).
• Physician burnout (57%), which is most likely related to the first two issues.

We were pleased to see that overall satisfaction with membership in the NCAFP is continuing to increase, with 92% of members reporting they were satisfied with their membership and 25% saying they were extremely satisfied, an increase from previous surveys. We were also glad to see that 87% of respondents said they were extremely likely or very likely to retain their membership, and another 9% said they were somewhat likely.

But what does all this mean?

While these results did not mean completely throwing out our previous strategic plan, they did result in greater focus and a tightened set of goals based on your feedback. So here are our updated areas of focus based on the results of the needs assessment and additional work to revise our strategic plan:

Advocacy Committee: Strengthen the influence of Family Medicine with health systems, government agencies, and payers.

Goals: 

• Decrease the administrative burden faced by family physicians in their day-to-day practice lives.
• Increase investment in family medicine to reflect our value and scope.

Practice Environment and Professional Development Committee: Support family physicians in their personal and professional development and satisfaction.

Goals:  

• Provide education on different practice models and enhanced practice efficiencies.
• Provide high quality education and increase networking opportunities.

Workforce Committee: Grow the future family physician workforce in North Carolina.

Goals:

• Encourage policy makers, systems leaders, and practices to incentivize precepting, teaching, and mentoring. 
• Nurture medical student interest, resident engagement, and new physician retention.

While the structure remained mostly the same, the NCAFP Board voted to reduce the number of goals to focus on the items you deemed most important, primarily administrative burden and increased investment in Family Medicine, while at the same time providing you with high-quality continuing education to improve your clinical and practice skills, and nurturing the future Family Medicine workforce. While the new plan does not limit us to these few areas, it provides a clear map of where we should be spending the time and resources you entrust to the NCAFP.

As we embark on this new structure, please look for additional information as we work to address these specific challenges, and please respond to any call for action we may need as we work to change statewide policies to serve you and your patients better.

*A version of this article appeared in the fall issue of the NCAFP magazine, The North Carolina Family Physician.