It incentivizes doctors to work as primary care physicians and encourages health systems to make it easy for patients to see them.

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Robert Flores, the group's medical director of population health management, says primary care physicians use the team to help them manage patients at high risk of hospitalization or re-hospitalization who can't easily get to a doctor's office.

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Among its many virtues, according to the survey, the state boasts a high percentage of residents with health insurance, high per-capita public health funding and ready availability of primary care physicians.

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Despite improving pay and the critical role primary care physicians will play in the future of health care in the U.S., there remains less interest by doctors-in-training in general medicine than specialty disciplines.

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Jeff Brenner, meanwhile, is seeking to lower health-care costs for all of Camden, by getting its primary-care physicians to extend the hot-spot strategy citywide.

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Experts say it is increasingly important for patients to lock in a primary-care doctor soon because of expected increased demand for physicians starting in 2014, when the new federal health-overhaul law will add millions of people to the health-insurance rolls.

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