New payment incentives are encouraging an increasing number of primary care practices to take the steps necessary to be certified as patient-centered medical homes (PCMH). Despite this growing interest in team-based care, little is known about how leaders of primary care facilities decide on the types of providers and support staff to hire, and how they organize their roles to best serve patients.

This article explores perceptions of CEOs of community health centers (CHCs) with a variety of staff configurations, and identifies a typology of factors they consider when deciding how to staff their centers.