Central Virginia Family Physicians Medical Group (CVFP) looks a lot different today than when Jarrett Dodd, MD, joined in 1995.
Back then, CVFP was “basically a clinic without walls. Five fairly independent practices that had come together just three years before,” as he described it during a recent episode of the “AMA STEPS Forward® Podcast” in which he shared how Privia Health has helped CVFP grow while maintaining its autonomy.
CVFP has since expanded into a fully integrated primary care practice with multiple sites and services, including endocrinology, cardiology, sports, osteopathic and neuromuscular medicine, and behavioral health—with its own laboratory and diagnostic center.
Their ability to keep their clinical and operational autonomy has been helped in no small way by joining Privia Medical Group in 2017.
“We weren’t required to sell our practice, and we could collaborate with them, becoming part of their medical group, while maintaining our own identity and the ability to run our practice sites the way we wanted to,” said Dr. Dodd, who is the chief medical officer of both CVFP and Privia Medical Group—Mid-Atlantic.
Privia Health is part of the AMA Health System Member Program, which provides enterprise solutions to equip leadership, physicians and care teams with resources to help drive the future of medicine. The AMA has also published guidance for physician practices considering similar partnerships (PDF).
Adopting new workflows, metrics
In the mid-2010s, CVFP began moving into value-based care through patient-centered medical home certification, but faced internal structural constraints.
“We had become acutely aware that our platform was not going to allow us to grow and get involved with public value-based care programs,” Dr. Dodd said. That was especially true of the Medicare Shared Savings Program, as well as private plans such as Medicare Advantage. “We had to transition our practice and focus more on population health, data analytics, quality reporting and tracking metrics.”
Privia Health provided the infrastructure that Dr. Dodd’s practice needed to embrace population health at scale. A shared EHR allowed the practice to aggregate clinical information across sites and access timely, actionable data on patient populations rather than one-on-one encounters. That foundation enabled CVFP to move beyond visit-based care and focus on managing defined patient populations more effectively.
Access to more robust analytics and reporting has proved invaluable. Scorecards and performance dashboards allow clinicians to measure performance tied to public value-based programs, adjust workflows, align care teams and track progress toward goals over time.
“Privia has a team of very gifted data analysts who are crunching those numbers for us and letting us know how we are doing,” Dr. Dodd said on the podcast. “You need the information to be successful. If you don’t know where you’re going, it’s hard to adjust what you need to do to get there.”
Moving into value-based care required Dr. Dodd and his practice partners to rethink longstanding habits, adopt new workflows and pay closer attention to quality metrics, which did not come easily.
“A big part of the shift was getting 60 or 70 clinicians to start looking at quality metrics and not get burned out,” he said. The delayed nature of shared-savings payments added to the difficulty, but clearer data, team-based support and consistent feedback built confidence and drove momentum.
It takes astute clinical judgment as well as a commitment to collaboration and solving challenging problems to succeed in settings that are often fluid, and the AMA offers the resources and support physicians need to both start and sustain success in private practice.
Aligning results, looking ahead
Today, CVFP’s value-based care strategy is yielding measurable results.
“We've been successful in the Medicare Shared Savings Program for the past several years,” Dr. Dodd said. “That's obviously a big win for patients and for clinicians, who are being rewarded for delivering high quality care.”
The collaboration with Privia Health has continued to evolve.
“Privia is really good about pairing up administrative folks with physician leaders to make sure that the platform is serving both sides of the equation,” he noted. Their physician-led governance and operational model have allowed CVFP to scale value-based capabilities that support both clinical priorities and the practice’s sustainability.
Dr. Dodd sees continued investment in analytics, workflows, and team-based care as a natural next step, especially as the expansion of Medicare Advantage health plans in Virginia introduces new metrics and operational complexity.
“We’re really hoping to continue building on the success we’ve had thus far,” he said. CVFP’s long-term commitment to value-based care aligns clinical quality, patient experience and financial sustainability in a way that fully aligns with the autonomy that has defined the organization for more than three decades.
Find out more about the AMA Private Practice Physicians Section, which seeks to preserve the freedom, independence and integrity of private practice.
