As patients encounter rising costs for health care services, there are new opportunities for clinicians to work with patients to understand how informed referrals and shared decision-making can improve patient experience. Too often, clinicians don't have information on the relative cost of health care services or facilities. In an effort to work toward standardization and enable comparisons, the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI) recently completed an 18 month pilot to produce total cost of care and resource-use data in 5 regions.
How can we promote investment in primary care? Which links can be drawn by primary care practices between the community and the medical neighborhood? How can we entice patients, families and even employers to engage in improving care quality? And finally, how can we build an interprofessional health workforce trained and prepared to deliver high quality primary care in team-based settings.
The Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative (PCPCC) hosted an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) webinar on July 8 on engaging primary care practices in quality improvement. Primary care can be considered the cornerstone of effective and efficient health care that meets the needs of patients, families, and communities. New resources authored by AHRQ and Mathematica Policy Research offer strategies to help build and sustain practices’ ability to continuously and effectively engage in quality improvement (QI) activities.
The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has focused their 2015 advocacy efforts on a bill called the Caregiver Advise, Record and Enable (CARE) Act in efforts to improve patient care at home. The CARE Act outlines a process by which a family can choose a designated caregiver for a loved one, where a Hospital then has the responsibility to instruct and demonstrate how to perform different medical tasks and give proper care.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has developed an extensive collection of resources for the primary care community to use in research and evaluation, quality improvement, and the delivery of improved primary care services. On May 21 at 1 p.m. EST, Janice Genevro, PhD, a health scientist at AHRQ, joined the PCPCC's National Briefing to provide an exploration of the PCMH Resource Center web site and other AHRQ tools designed to support the delivery of evidence-based, patient-centered primary care.
Last month, Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, launched the Health Care Value Hub, a networking and resource center for advocates working for lower costs and better value in health care. Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Health Care Value Hub will support and connect consumer advocates across the United States, providing comprehensive, research-based information and tools to help them advocate for policies that reduce health care costs and increase quality.
Everything you know about gamification is wrong. Gamification is NOT about points and badges and leaderboards. Putting points and badges on top of systems that were not designed to be game-like is like welding wheels on a bicycle. It looks from a distance like it will work, but the results are guaranteed to disappoint.
The current fee-for-service model of primary care delivery in the United States is outdated and wreaking havoc on the foundation of our healthcare system. This model will be phased out over the next decade in favor of value-based reimbursement (among other changes). Residency programs, however, are often based on the old model of care and, consequently, are not prepared to train residents for the future models of care. In order to address this deficiency, residency-training collaboratives have been popping up around the country.
The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is focused on ensuring that health IT is helping to support healthcare transformation and the move toward value-based care delivery.
On Feb. 26, Martha Gerrity, MD, MPH, PhD, Clinical Epidemiologist at the Center for Evidence-based Policy at Oregon Health & Science University, joined the PCPCC to discuss her latest Milbank Memorial Fund report, “Integrating Primary Care into Behavioral Health Settings: What Works for Individuals with Serious Mental Illness.”
