While the patient-centered medical home has been touted as the foundation for a better coordinated and more efficient healthcare system, experts now say medical home practices need to be connected to other parts of the healthcare system. To this end, the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative has released a report listing 10 “essential” health information technology tools needed to make these population health connections.
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Larger independent physician groups with “strong primary-care orientations” and where doctors have accepted greater financial risk deliver better quality care for Medicare beneficiaries at lower cost, according to a report in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Researchers with Harvard Medical School's healthcare policy department studied 2009 Medicare claims for almost 4.3 million beneficiaries and compared spending and quality measures for small (one to 10 doctors), medium-to-large and hospital-based physician groups. Quality measures included 30-day hospital readmissions, and mammography, diabetes and cholesterol screening for the appropriate patients.
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Physician assistants and nurse practitioners increasingly are specializing and can't be counted on to provide the solution to the nation's shortage of primary-care providers, a report by the American Academy of Family Physicians concluded.
Even though they're often touted as a solution to filling in patient care gaps because of a shortage of primary-care docs, not enough PAs and NPs are working in primary care to make a difference, so policymakers need to come up with better solutions to address primary-care access, the researchers said.
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The application of health information technology in primary-care settings can improve the quality of care, but it's no magic wand for quality improvement, according to a report on two dozen grant programs funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
The report found the use of health IT coincided with greater adherence by providers to processes related to evidence-based care recommendations and improvements in patients' overall health status, as well as improved clinical outcomes for patients with chronic diseases if coupled with other workflow changes, among other findings.
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A prominent organization representing internal medicine physicians has launched a public relations campaign to, well, tell the public what internal medicine physicians do.
For one thing, the Philadelphia-based American College of Physicians, with 137,000 members, wants the public to understand that there is a big difference between internists and interns. One is a board-certified doctor of internal medicine, while the other is medical school graduate in his or her first year of post-graduate training. Who knew?
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Mobile computing devices are becoming almost as much of an essential tool in U.S. physician practices as the exam table, according to a new survey.
Nearly 80% of 300 U.S. practicing physicians in primary care, family and internal medicine that were sampled and surveyed in April said they were using a smartphone in their “day-to-day practice.” Another 61% were using mobile tablets.
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Republican and Democratic leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee released the latest version of a draft bill to repeal Medicare's sustainable growth-rate formula calling for a five-year period of stable payment increases as physicians transition into new payment models. But lawmakers still offered no way to offset the cost of the repeal.
Totaling 70 pages, the bill is a work in progress, as the panel's health subcommittee will mark up the legislation next week. Committee members—along with members of the House Ways and Means Committee—have worked throughout the year to craft a bill incorporating comments from more than 80 stakeholders. As before, this version of the bill gives providers the option of leaving traditional Medicare fee-for-service to try new payment models that emphasize better quality and lower costs.
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McDermott
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) wants to reduce organized medicine's role in setting Medicare fees. But such legislation is likely to face stiff resistance from the American Medical Association and subspecialist physician groups, who are heavily represented in the fee-setting process.
McDermott has introduced legislation that he said will address “the lack of transparency and fairness” in setting the Medicare fee schedule and lessen the CMS' reliance on guidance from the AMA's Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee—commonly referred to as “the RUC.”
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