Patient Centered Leadership: More than a Score

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Why your organization is engaged in true patient-centered leadership… Perhaps the central questions for leaders are: What really matters to patients and families? Is our organization engaged inpatient-centered leadership or patient-satisfaction leadership? Patient-centered leadership: Staff members at patient-centered organizations actively work on various improvement projects at all times. They come together in cooperative, cross-functional teams and dig into the basic work of improvement— identifying variation and gaps in quality, running PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) cycles and participating in other targeted patient centeredness initiatives. Patient-satisfaction leadership: Organizations that focus on patient satisfaction tend to have a culture of compliance in which frontline staff members are preoccupied with conforming to a set of guidelines intended to help increase satisfaction scores. When no frontline staff are serving on an improvement team, … Continue reading →

New Evidence for PCMH from Large-Scale Study in New York

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The evidence base for PCMH is growing as more projects are conducting and publishing detailed evaluations.  A new study from Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield is particularly important because it compares a large group of patients in a PCMH environment to a large control group of patients in non-PCMH practices.  The results are compelling, as PCMH practices were associated with better preventive health, higher levels of disease management, and lower resource utilization and costs compared with practices not pursuing PCMH status. The study included 31,032 PCMH and 350,015 non-PCMH patients. Among PCMH-treated patients, diabetics had higher rates of glycated … Continue reading →

PCPCC Summarizes Cost and Quality Results from More than 30 PCMH Projects

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The Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative (www.pcpcc.net) has been a driving force in the spread of the PCMH model of care.  In a new report titled Benefits of Implementing the Primary Care Patient-Centered Medical Home, the PCPCC summarizes cost and quality results achieved by more than 30 PCMH projects across the country.  The results show that the PCMH model can produce positive results for patient populations in Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance.  Examples include: Reductions in emergency department utilization Reductions in hospital admissions Reductions in specialist utilization Reductions in overall health care costs Improvement in access to care Reductions in appointment … Continue reading →

AHRQ Guide on Coordinating Care in the Medical Neigbhorhood

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Many of the goals of the PCMH rely on improved communication and coordination among health care providers and  institutions. Specialists, hospitals, other providers, health plans, and other  stakeholders play key roles in ensuring a close-knit and high-functioning  medical neighborhood. This paper examines the various “neighbors” in the medical neighborhood and how these neighbors could work together better, thus allowing the PCMH to reach its full potential to improve patient outcomes. Click here to view and download the document from AHRQ.

Care Coordination and the Patient Centered Medical Neighborhood

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The Improving Chronic Illness Care project defines care coordination is “the deliberate organization of patient care activities between two or more participants involved in a patient’s care to facilitate the appropriate delivery of health care services.”  In this definition, all providers working with a particular patient share important clinical information and have clear, shared expectations about their roles.  Equally important, they work together to keep patients and their families informed and to ensure that effective referrals and transitions take place.  This resource provides a wealth of knowledge and tools for coordinating chronic care at the community level as part of … Continue reading →

Extended Office Hours and Health Care Expenditures: A National Study

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Shared by Paulette McElwain, Virginia League of Planned Parenthood: This study demonstrates that evening and weekend office hours decrease healthcare costs: http://annfammed.org/content/10/5/388.full.pdf Click PCMH Impact Research in the top menu to browse more studies and evaluations.