Hope Raised by Patient-Centered Medical Home

Greenbeard

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Jun 20, 2010
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Nice little article today about the potential of the patient-centered medical home model. Public and private payers alike have been working (often together) with providers to try and improve this model in pilots across the country (at least one state has converted its entire Medicaid program to follow the PCMH model). Have a read:

Robert Reid thinks he has seen the future, and it comes from Washington.

Not D.C. -- the state of Washington.

That's where Reid of Seattle's Group Health Research Institute has seen the patient-centered medical home in action, and that's what he was preaching to medical leaders in Sacramento yesterday.

"At Group Health, we found it was possible to improve outcomes, lessen physician burnout and reduce costs," Reid said. "That’s a triple whammy! You never see that."

Reid gives credit for the Washington state practice's fundamental improvement to adoption of the patient-centered medical home model.

"This really is an exciting time for primary care and there's a marked opportunity here," Reid said. "The United States has finally woken up to the promise of primary care -- and we're moving into a new era with the patient-centered medical home."

Reid boils the concept to five major points:

  • Establishing and maintaining a strong relationship between the doctor and the patient;
  • Making sure a physician leads a patient's care;
  • Making health care proactive and comprehensive;
  • Increasing access centered on patients' needs, with maximum use of technology; and
  • Making sure clinical and business systems are aligned with all of these goals.

[...]
 
Sorta like trying to tune up a car once a week, huh.

Listen. If you don't need a doctor, for heavens sake don't go to a doctor. Just because people get old does not mean they have to have a doctor in their hip pocket.

All kinds of studies show people do better when they DON'T go to doctors on a regular basis, and some studies show the Patients do much better when they are taken off the murphy's mix of medications.

Around there in this family, you go to the doctor when you need a doctor and only when you need a doctor.
 
Sorta like trying to tune up a car once a week, huh.

Not really, no. Simply having a regular primary care doctor with a coordinated care plan is not overutilization.

But I'm not sure where you're getting the notion that primary care systems characterized by features like longitudinality and coordination aren't associated with better health outcomes since, you know, they are. Haphazardness is not healthy.
 
Ol' Toss apparently does not realize that the nations that have adapted the preventive care model have much better results than we do. Higher longevity, and much lower infant mortality. Even little Costa Rica, with an average income 1/10 of that in the US.
 

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