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Care Providers & Care Coordination

Obama Budget: Hospitals Should Warrantee Admissions for 30 Days

Warrantee

War`ran*tee", noun. A written assurance that some product or service will be provided or will meet certain specifications.

Today when we buy practically any consumer item we expect a warrantee.

What’s the “warrantee” after you are discharged from a hospital?

Last September I wrote a post posing the question “What’s the Best Way to Get Hospitals Involved in Care Coordination? ” The short answer was:  Pay them to do it, take money away when they don’t — make hospitals accountable for their […]

Spider Webs of Care Coordination Networks

We have learned that coordinating care of patients — particular care of Medicare patients — is complex and time consuming for physicians.

A breakthrough study quantifies just how complex and challenging care coordination really is.  The study is reported in the February 17 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine and is entitled Primary Care Physicians’ Links to Other Physicians Through Medicare Patients: The Scope of Care Coordination :

We found that in a single year for just fee-for-service Medicare patients, the typical primary care physician needs […]

Why Clinical Groupware May Be the Next Big Thing in Health IT

by David C. Kibbe MD, MBA

What would you call health care software that:

Is Web-based and networkable, therefore highly scalable and inexpensive to purchase and use;
Provides a ‘unified view’ of a patient from multiple sources of data and information;
Is designed to be used interactively – by providers and patients alike – to coordinate care and create continuity;
Offers evidence-based guidance and coaching, personalized by access to a person’s health data as it changes;
Collects, for analysis and reporting, quality and performance measures as […]

Complimentary Issue — Medical Home News

Would you like to receive a complimentary issue of a new publication — Medical Home News ?  Click on the link and then on “Sample Issue” in the upper left corner.

Here’s a preview of the first issue:

Introducing Medical Home News
An Annotated Guide to the Medicare Medical Home Demonstration (MMHD)
Subscriber’s Corner
Johns Hopkins Lipitz Center to Assist Practices in Medical Home Demo
National Medical Home Summit to be Held March 2nd – 3rd 2009
Thought Leader’s Corner
Industry News
Catching Up With… Paul Grundy, MD

I’m honored […]

Medicare Health Support: 8 Takeaways on Building Better Bridges

by Thomas Wilson, PhD, DrPH and Vince Kuraitis

What’s the right metaphor for Medicare Health Support (MHS), CMS’ major experiment with disease management for Medicare beneficiaries?  We prefer to look it as a bridge failure that presents an opportunity to improve future engineering and design.

We’ve now had the time to read, reread, and reread again the very recent report from Research Triangle Institute (RTI) — Evaluation of Phase I of the Medicare Health Support Pilot Program Under Traditional Fee-for-Service Medicare: […]

JAMA Article Asks: What About “The Other Medical Home”?

Dr. Steven H. Landers writes a thoughtful article in today’s JAMA .  He asks why the term Medical Home doesn’t include the patient’s home:

“…the Medical Home initiative, as currently articulated, ironically fails to emphasize the complex chronically ill patient’s actual home. This represents a failure to recognize the profile of the highest-risk beneficiaries driving much of the high Medicare costs—that is those with or more chronic conditions and activity limitations…

“A promising way to strengthen and broaden the Medical Home initiative […]

Disruption in the Neighborhood? The PCs Build the Medical Home.

There’s a new house being built in the vacant lot across the street.  It’s the medical home, and it is going to be occupied by several primary care physician families (PCs).

From what’s been said, the PCs are nice folks and will make good neighbors.  They’re friendly, many are Episcopalian, they like white picket fences, and they have barbeques on Sunday afternoons. The neighborhood they’re coming from is not as well off nor as pristine — they’re said to be suffering from […]

Empowering Health IT for the Medical Home

by David C. Kibbe, MD MBA

The basic premise of the medical home concept is continuous, uninterrupted care that is managed and coordinated by a personal provider with the right tools that will lead to better health outcomes.

In 2007, the American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians, and American Osteopathic Association, released the Joint Principles of the Patient-Centered Medical Home. In this document they state the characteristics of the Patient Centered Medical Home:

Personal Relationship
Team Approach
Comprehensive
Coordination
Quality […]

Finally! CMS Provides a Flood of Details About the Medicare Medical Home Demo

I’ve been critical in the past when CMS has been silent in explaining their thinking, so I’ll start this post by congratulating CMS on sharing a flood of details about the upcoming Medicare Medical Home Demonstration project.

An email from CMS arrived in my inbox this morning at 2 am.  That email notified me that they have updated the MMHD homepage .  A quick click lead me to 8 new documents containing 155 pages of newly available details on the MMHD.

If you have time to read […]

Implementing a Medical Home — Akin to Do-It-Yourself Brain Surgery?

This morning the Disease Management Care Blog brought an interesting toolkit to my attention. It was published by AHRQ in August 2008, so it’s very recent.

This toolkit describes how to implement the Chronic Care Model (CCM) in your medical practice. The CCM is embedded in the Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) model and can be consider a foundational element of the PCMH.

I would call this toolkit “The Medical Home for Dummies, Vol. I”, but then I’m sure the Dummies […]