Colorado officials tell Washington panel their primary care investment target coincided with reported 15.7% share of spending

Colorado regulators told Washington's cost board that state legislative action and regulatory tools helped build a multi‑payer platform to raise and measure primary care investment.

Tara Smith, who leads Colorado's Primary Care Payment Reform Collaborative, said Colorado's APCD reporting in 2024 showed the state "sitting about 15.7%" of total medical expenditures flowing through primary care spending, but she cautioned that methodology and line‑of‑business differences make comparisons nuanced. "We are one of the states that includes both claims and non‑claims based spending as part of that calculation," she said, noting evolved APM reporting categories and occasional payer reclassifications.

Smith also described complementary regulatory levers: a 2019 law that created the collaborative and authorized affordability standards in rate review, and a 2022 tool allowing the Division of Insurance to set aligned APM parameters for commercial payers. On APM adoption, she reported that roughly "about 60% is flowing through value based payment models" in carriers' reported primary care spending and stressed that providers sometimes question whether reported APM volumes match their frontline experience.

Colorado officials emphasized iterative data improvement and a multi‑year evaluation plan. They said the state's incremental investment target (a 1 percentage point increase in primary care share over 2022–23) and the ability to break out spending by commercial, Medicaid and Medicare Advantage lines were central to their approach, while cautioning that reported changes can reflect methodology updates as much as true shifts in practice-level funding.