A recently concluded demonstration project made meaningful progress toward introducing a "patient-centered medical home" approach at "safety net" practices serving vulnerable and underserved populations. Lessons learned in the course of developing and implementing the Safety Net Medical Home Initiative (SNMHI) are featured in a special November supplement to Medical Care.
AAP president James M. Perrin, MD, FAAP, emphasized the importance of the medical home and how comprehensive care can alleviate two significant threats to the promise of a child — toxic stress and poverty — during his address at the 2014 AAP National Conference and Exhibition.
Healthcare delivery systems should consider leveraging nurse practitioners and physician assistants, patient-centered medical homes, multi-disciplinary care teams, and health information technology to meet the future demands for primary care, according to a new report from UnitedHealthcare.
The financial burden of health information exchange (HIE) and the difficulty of wrangling multiple vendors into some sense of interoperability are among the top challenges facing the national health IT infrastructure and the shift towards population health management, according to the eHealth Initiative’s 2014 survey. While Stage 2 of meaningful use has pushed the industry towards wider adoption of Direct messaging and registry reporting, providers have a long road to travel before data exchange becomes simple and seamless across the care continuum.
The recent 90-day review of the Military Healthcare System found it “comparable in access, quality and safety to average private-sector health care,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told a press conference last week.
That was disappointing to hear for a medical system that, for decades, has described itself as overall excellent and among the best in the country.
Medicaid has offered an attractive venue for states and the federal government to pursue patient-centered medical home (PCMH) innovation experiments, but one state initiative that launched before PCMH certification even began offered potential lessons before it was curtailed for budget reasons, according to a recent study.
Jeffrey Brenner doesn’t believe in blaming a person for showing up at an emergency room for a cold or an ear infection, even if the illness could have been treated in a doctor’s office at much lower cost. Instead, he faults the health care system, and he wants to prove that if providers, employers and insurers work together more effectively, that person will stop going to the ER.
Brenner, a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and executive director of the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, is testing this theory with a randomized controlled trial. Findings are due out in 2016.
Commercial health plans have “dramatically shifted” in how they pay hospitals and physicians, with 40 percent of all payments reflecting value over volume, but 60 percent of payments remain tied to the traditional fee-for-service model, according to the nonprofit Catalyst for Payment Reform.
Today, Catalyst for Payment Reform (CPR) unveiled some potentially exciting news: Our 2014 National Scorecard on Payment Reform tells us 40 percent of commercial sector payments to doctors and hospitals now flow through value-oriented payment methods, defined as payment methods designed to improve quality and reduce waste. This is a dramatic increase since 2013 when the figure was just 11 percent.
