Accountable Physician Practice
An Accountable Physician Practice is a multispecialty medical group or physician organization that strives to integrate and coordinate the work of a community of physicians and health care professionals to provide comprehensive outpatient services for patients. These health care professionals work in teams and are encouraged and supported by the organization’s work flow processes, communications procedures, and payment systems to quickly and easily get patients the care they need when they need it. The Accountable Physician Practice is built on the multispecialty medical group model: teams of physicians skilled in a range of specialties who practice together. These groups include primary care doctors, specialists, health educators, nurses, dieticians, and all the other health professionals a patient might need to stay healthy.

Coordinated care
Coordinated care is enhanced quality of care and quality of life for patients requiring health care services from multiple providers and across multiple health care facilities or settings. Patients receive coordinated care from an efficient integrated or organized delivery system, wherein medical resources are shared by and communication about treatment plans takes place between all care providers so that the best, most-informed medical decisions can be made on behalf of the patient.

Organized delivery system:
An organized delivery system is a “network of organizations that provides or arranges to provide a coordinated continuum of services to a defined population and is willing to be held clinically and fiscally accountable for the outcomes and health status of the population served.”
—S. M. Shortell and others, Remaking Health Care in America: The Evolution of Organized Delivery Systems (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996), p. 7.

“Obama Visits Clinic Known for Quality Care, Controlling Costs,” by David Brown, The Washington Post, July 23, 2009

The Post takes a more in-depth look at The Cleveland Clinic, a CAPP medical group, that was touted by President Obama as a model of health care efficiency and quality.

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“Yes, models for cost-efficient health care do exist,” by Jim Landers, The Dallas Morning News, July 28, 2009

CAPP group Scott & White is featured in this article that reviews some of the Dartmouth findings on organizations that can curb health care costs.

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“Atul Gawande: The Cost Conundrum Redux,” by Atul Gawande, The New Yorker, June 23, 2009.

Gawande responds to the skeptics of his highly publicized New Yorker article.

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“The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care,” by Atul Gawande, The New Yorker, June 01, 2009

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