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Is Your Physician Patient-Centered? Five Ways To Tell

Hint: Being Designated As A Patient-Centered Medical Home Is Not One

We hear a lot about patient-centered care these days. In particular, a growing number of physicians across the country are now referring to their practices as a “Patient-Centered Medical Home.”

But how can you tell if your physician’s practice really is patient-centered, no matter what he or she may call themself? More importantly, why should you care? What is patient-centered care, you ask?

It’s quality care delivered in a manner where you feel that your provider:

  • Knows who you are personally as well as clinically.
  • Understands, respects and honors (where practicable) your previous health experiences, beliefs and preferences.
  • Facilitates and supports your health choices and behavior barring a serious conflict of beliefs or principles.

Since each of us possess a different set of experiences, beliefs and preferences, patient -entered care by definition is tailored to individual patients. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*

Primary Care Crisis: Why The Patient-Centered Medical Home Will Fail

Everyone understands the need for a robust primary care workforce in making healthcare more affordable and accessible while keeping those in our care healthy. With the aging of America and healthcare reform, even more Americans will need primary care doctors at precisely the same time doctors are leaving the specialty in droves and medical students shun the career choice.

As a practicing primary care doctor, I’ve watched with great interest the solutions for the primary care crisis. And I’ve been utterly disappointed.

Patients so far don’t like the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) as noted in Dr. Pauline Chen’s New York Times column. The changes recommended won’t inspire the next generation of doctors to become internists and family doctors. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*

Fixing Up Primary Care: Is Anyone “Home?”

love Don't live here anymore... by Robb North via Flickr

By John Henning Schumann, M.D.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka “Health Care Reform”) signed by President Obama in March will revolutionize primary care in the United States. By 2014 tens of millions of uninsured people will “enter” the system by being granted insurance, either through expansion of the Medicaid program or through mandated purchasing of insurance via state pools or the private market.

This alone will have a profound impact, straining the capacity of our already frayed system. Therefore, embedded in the law are funds to encourage growth and improvement in primary care: Incentives to encourage graduates to enter primary care fields (family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics) and practice in underserved areas (through scholarships and loan forgiveness), and money to re-format the way that primary care is practiced and paid for. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

What A ’68 Chevy Impala Can Tell Us About Primary Care

When I was a much younger man I had a 1968 Chevy Impala. I loved its V-8 engine and spaciousness, but I paid a steep price for it. It consumed gas like a drunk on a binge. It was prone to breakdowns, usually in the left lane of a busy highway. Even as it consumed my limited financial resources, I couldn’t count on it to reliably get me to where I wanted to be. Yet I held onto it. One day, though, its transmission gave out, and I finally had to resign myself to buying a new, more reliable, more modern, and efficient vehicle. Yet to this day, I miss my clunker.

I am reminded of this when I think about the state of primary care today. Many of us are attached to a traditional primary care model that may no longer be economically viable — for physicians, for patients, and for purchasers.

We hold onto a model where primary care doctors are paid based on the volume of visits, not the quality and value of care rendered. We hold onto a model where patient records are maintained in paper charts in voluminous file folders, instead of digitalizing and connecting patient records. We hold onto a model that generates enormous overhead costs for struggling physician-owners but generates insufficient revenue. We hold onto a model that most young doctors won’t buy, as they pursue more financially viable specialties and practices. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The ACP Advocate Blog by Bob Doherty*

Is Doctor-Patient Communication Better In “Medical Homes?”

Probably not yet. I think everyone would agree that Group Health of Seattle probably has a pretty good “take” on issues dealing with primary care redesign and the patient-centered medical home (PCMH). That’s why I surprised by a recent comment on a Group Health blog from by Matt Handley, M.D., in response to an earlier post here about patient question-asking. Dr. Handley is an Associate Medical Director for Quality and Informatics at Group Health.

Dr. Handley writes:

“While doctors often take pride in how open they are to patient questions, our self assessment doesn’t match up very well with empirical evidence. A recent post on Mind the Gap summarizes a small study that is relatively terrifying to me –- the take home is that doctors spend very little time explaining their recommendations, and that patients rarely ask questions.”

I picked up the phone and talked with Dr. Handley about his comments and work being done on PCMH at Group Health. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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