Practice Changes to Improve Patient Care

In the fast paced medical world, it becomes increasing difficult to keep abreast of the non-clinical changes affecting our practices.  The Future of Family Medicine Task Force has tried to compile information on the Future of Family Medicine and it’s New Model of Care with the more recent Medical Home definitions.  It is our hope that you will check back periodically for updated information.

The Latest Information – Posted September 2007

The Medical Home is being refined in many arenas.  AAFP’s Family Practice Management September issue has an article entitled The Medical Home: An Idea Whose Time has Come … Again by Leigh Ann Backer.  She discusses the criteria that is being developed by the National Committee for Quality Assurance. 

In MAFP correspondence directly with NCQA, we have learned that NCQA is scheduled to unveil their Physician Practice Connections Patient-Centered Medical Home (PPC-PCMH) standards (criteria) and guidelines in December.  By the beginning of January the program will be ready for practices to apply using a Web-based survey tool. The questions associated with PPC-PCMH will be loaded into the survey tool so that the practice can see their score prior to submitting to NCQA. The survey tool is intended to be used to determine if practices qualify as a medical home.   Watch here for a link when it is unveiled.

MAFP has also been publishing articles in the Minnesota Family Physician on concepts of the Medical Home.  The series of articles was launched in the July/August issue with What Is A Medical Home?   The September/October issue focused on Coordination of Care and referenced a list of suggested considerations in assessing your clinic’s achievement of care coordination in the medical home model.

Where did all this talk on changing family medicine start?
Crossing the Quality Chasm from the Institute of Medicine was instrumental in challenging physicians to look at how medicine is practiced.  AAFP’s Future of Family Medicine Report accepted the challenge and took a long hard look at our specialty and how it can be changed while keeping the integrity of family medicine intact.  Part of the report identified the New Model of Care tenets which are considered essential to re-making family medicine. 

Where did all this talk on changing family medicine start?
Crossing the Quality Chasm from the Institute of Medicine was instrumental in challenging physicians to look at how medicine is practiced.  AAFP’s Future of Family Medicine Report accepted the challenge and took a long hard look at our specialty and how it can be changed while keeping the integrity of family medicine intact.  Part of the report identified the New Model of Care tenets which are considered essential to re-making family medicine. 

How did the MAFP respond?
We are pleased to announce that The New Model of Family Medicine in Minnesota DVD can be viewed online or you can request a copy be sent to you.  The DVD shows practical applications of eleven tenets identified by the AAFP Future of Family Medicine Report.   Minnesota family physicians talk about how their clinic implemented the concepts to improve patient care.   MAFP members share their success stories on using new technology.

What is a Medical Home?
A quick overview of the medical home lays the basis for more comprehensive work to further define the implications for patients and member practices.  In the summer of 2006, the MAFP produced a cable commercial introducing the medical home concept to Minnesota members and viewers.  View Commercial

It takes collaboration to make things happen 
The MAFP launched an initiative to define the medical home as the next step towards educating our members, the legislature, governmental entities, health care delivery systems and the public.  The MAFP Board of Directors approved a Position Statement on the Concept of the Medical Home in March 2006.  During the development of that statement, we researched other organizations’ work on the medical home, including American Academy of Pediatrics and the advanced medical home by the American College of Physicians.

In February, 2007, the AAFP, AOA, ACP and AAP released the Joint Principles of the Patient-Centered Medical Home as a method of providing comprehensive primary care in a health care setting that promotes collaboration between patients and physicians.   

Who else is working on this?
Locally, the Minnesota Medical Association has taken a strong lead by establishing and publishing the MMA Health Reform Task Force Report.  It continues to build collaboration with other organizations, including the Minnesota AFP to create a model of patient-centered care that will be supported by health plans, employers, and the public. The Healthy Minnesota: A Partnership for Reform sets the parameters for success and as a launching point to build a reimbursement model. 

Report on Financing the New Model of Care (AAFP Task Force 6 Report) takes an initial step in helping family physicians eliminate waste in their practices, improve coding and meeting the measurements for performance. 

The AAFP’s Center for Health Information Technology (ChiT), has modules of free CME activities created to help FPs learn how to research, select and implement electronic health records (EHRs) in their practices.  The latest addition to the series of online tutorials is “Health Information Technology for the Family Physician Office: Implementing Your Electronic Health Record.”  The module is designed to help users identify and accomplish pre-implementation tasks and then to help them formulate a strategy for implementing their EHR system.

Another AAFP program is TransForMED which is a practice redesign initiative focused on studying and implementing transformed models of high performance practices that meet the needs of both patients and practices.  In June 2006, TransforMED launched a 24-month National Demonstration Project, serving as a "Learning Lab" to generate new knowledge about the process of practice transformation and to systematically evaluate and compare the effect of two practice transformation approaches on practice and patient outcomes.

How and why will Legislation help?
Several health care reform initiatives in the 2007 Legislature included proposals to begin processes to developing and pilot-testing components of the medical home concept and to explore payment system reform.  For up-to-date information, go to Legislative Update page.

Data supports Value of Family Medicine
Through the MAFP Research Committee, a summary of each resource and reference is provided for over ten sources that support topics on the cost effectiveness and quality care for primary care, patient involvement in care decisions and healthcare quality outcomes in the US.

AAFP has an online resource, Value of Family Medicine, that provides links to abstracts and/or articles commonly requested by family physicians.  This handy resource can help prepare you to speak at your Chamber of Commerce, Rotary or other service organizations.  These articles can provide material when speaking at grand rounds to medical student lunches to patient care. 

If we have missed a resource that you have found to be useful, please email the Minnesota Academy at office@mafp.org.