Performance improvements are attributed in part to tying physicians' performance bonuses to actionable patient data. But "not all medical home interventions are alike," one researcher notes.
A medical home model in Pennsylvania that provided timely and pertinent patient data to physicians and paid bonuses for the resulting improved care showed significant improvements over comparison practices, a RAND study shows.
Peers for Progress reports opportunities, challenges for community health workers
As patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs) continue to gain steam, a new report reinforces the fact that the model's mission of lowering costs and improving access to care relies on the use of peer support from community health workers (CHWs).
Before the explosion of managed care, electronic health records (EHRs), hospital mega-mergers, and just before the rise of hospitalists, primary care physicians had a very different role.
Leaders in the field who have practiced over several decades have different ideas about what has had the biggest effect in the last 20 years, but all agree they see their careers very differently than they did in 1995.
Calvin Sia, MD, Christine Sinsky, MD, and Melinda Abrams, MS, to receive awards at PCPCC Annual Fall Conference Awards Dinner
WASHINGTON – Today the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative (PCPCC) announced the recipients of its 2015 leadership awards. Dr. Calvin Sia will receive the group’s prestigious Barbara Starfield Primary Care Leadership Award during PCPCC’s Annual Awards Dinner at its Fall Conference on Nov. 11, 2015. Dr. Sia is a retired primary care pediatrician who spent much of his career advancing the medical home concept in his home state of Hawaii as well as nationally and internationally.
AHA15: CEOs from Carilion Clinic, Cedars-Sinai and Trinity Health address partnerships, medical homes and urgent care
In response to the new healthcare reality of a consumer-driven market, many hospital and systems undertake new initiatives, including partnering with competitors to increase access to services, helping patients transition from primary care practices to medical homes, providing new access points for urgent care and using technology to improve access to healthcare and the overall patient experience.
With alarming regularity, many promising pilots in the health care improvement and implementation field have little overall impact when applied more broadly. For example, following early reports that care coordination programs benefit patients and reduce costs, a 2012 Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report found no net benefit, on average, across 34 care coordination and disease management programs on hospital admissions or regular Medicare spending.
Pennsylvania’s Dept. of Human Services has announced that the Pennsylvania Academy of Family Physicians’ (PAFP) past-president and current Board Chair Douglas Spotts, MD and Crozer-Keystone Health System’s Family Medicine Residency Program Director William Warning, MD have been appointed to the state’s first Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Advisory Council. Dr. Spotts is also the Chief Medical Information Officer at Evangelical Community Hospital in Lewisburg.
