People actively working to transform health care delivery

 

Jeffrey Hanson, Thomson Reuters

Why are you involved in the PCPCC?

My personal interest is in the whole movement towards a patient centered health system. 

From a business perspective, I work for a large information company and information is going to be at the core of this.  It’s important to ensure the types of information for patients and doctors to use at the point of care are there in order to make better decisions .

You work in leadership for the Center for eHealth Information Adoption and Exchange.  How important is that center to the PCMH model?

I think the focus is currently lopsided.  The focus is really on the adoption of health IT, and I think nothing is really going to transform health care until the actual exchange of the information happens and people use it in the way it was meant to be used.  I think it will be very easy for the health care community at some level to adopt technology now that there’s funding out there for it.  But what’s important is how they use it and how they exchange it.

Why do you think the PCMH model is important from a policy standpoint?

Even for a consumer in a large metropolitan area like Boston, which is flooded with high-performing physicians of every type, I think from my perspective, to have a medical home where someone can go to and get answers is very valuable.  There is so much information out there right now that I think patients are paralyzed to do anything.  It gets even worse when the system they go into is so fragmented. So from a policy perspective, I think it’s extraordinarily important to pull that together and then to have a medical home where someone can go to find someone who will listen and help them get answers to the issues and health problems that they are facing.

 

Shari Erickson, MPH, American College of Physicians

Why is the PCMH important to you?

It’s a critical part of my job at the American College of Physicians.  We represent over 129,000 internal medicine physicians across the country, over half of which are involved in providing primary care.  They are currently trying to provide the best possible care for their patients in a system that incentivizes volume over quality and satisfaction.  The patient centered medical home model is one that we believe can contribute to improving this broken system for our members and their patients, so that they and other key stakeholders can obtain greater satisfaction and value from the system.  Therefore, I’m engaged in helping to move PCMH pilots along to test this concept in order to learn from it, develop it further, and determine how best to implement it on a broader scale.

On a personal level, I am also motivated by the experiences that my family and I have had within the current health care system, such as unnecessary or duplicate tests, poor handoffs during care transitions, and inadequate communication from and with the care team.  I hope that in some way the work we’re doing can improve it on the ground level for the people I and other consumers, patients, and caregivers care about.  

Why do you think the PCMH model is important from a policy standpoint?

I believe it’s important to improve access to care through coverage, but doing that alone isn’t enough.  We must have a system that works in order to handle the influx of previously uninsured individuals, as well as those that are already participants.  The PCMH is one approach that can contribute to improving the system through its focus on the partnerships of individual patients with their physicians and care teams, coordinated care that is integrated across settings, and optimal quality and safety.  Additionally, the PCMH model is one that can lead to greater satisfaction among primary care physician and their teams, which may contribute to efforts aimed at improving the dwindling pipeline of primary care providers.  Therefore, it is critical that the PCMH model be incorporated into the current health care reform efforts.

You are in leadership for the Center for Multi-Stakeholder Demonstrations.  Why is this Center’s work important to advancing the PCMH?

One primary roles that the Center can continue to take on is convening key stakeholders to share their achievements, barriers, and lessons learned in testing and implementing the PCMH model—and then to  compile and broadly disseminate these experiences and lessons.  While every PCMH pilot is unique in many ways, most of them come face-to-face with similar issues such as what evaluation methodology and measures to use, anti-trust issues, practice transformation approaches, payment methodologies, what technologies to employ, how to implement those technologies, etc.—and so sharing information across projects on a regular basis is extremely valuable and we will hope will help to get more pilots off the ground and rapidly facilitate the spread and broader implementation of the model as more and more positive results come in.