A system that is centered around the patient’s needs.
Health care in America is less a system than a multitude of distinct specialties, processes, and financial interests. The result is confusing and ineffective: conflicting incentives, slow dissemination of knowledge, and a difficult trade-off between cost and quality.

• “About one-third of U.S. patients reported problems with the coordination of their care, such as test results not being available when they arrived at a doctor’s appointment or doctors ordering duplicate tests.”
—Source: “Primary Care and Health System Performance: Adults’ Experiences in Five Countries,” Health Affairs, October, 2004

There is a better way to put the pieces together. And it’s being done everyday at Accountable Physician Practices.
When teams of health professionals—nurses, nutritionists, care managers, health educators and more—collaborate in support of doctors, everything works better. Doctors of all kinds are working together to share expertise and do more of what they do best: take care of patients. Patients are literally surrounded with highly coordinated and well-timed care—care that boosts both their health and confidence. When test results and doctor’s orders are accurate, and available when and where they are needed, patients can be more confident in the availability and quality of their medical attention.

Performance and satisfaction are improved–everyone benefits.

• The nurses of the Patient Support Center at HealthCare Partners Medical Group in Southern California not only provide after-hours medical advice and coordinate hospital discharge orders, they also keep the patients’ primary care physicians informed. Patients who receive after-hours advice can rest assured that their doctors will be aware of their condition when the doctors’ offices open the next day.

• “This is a great place to work because of the people of Mayo Clinic— people who are committed to excellence, committed to our patients and committed to supporting each other.”
– Dr. Denis Cortese, Mayo Clinic President and CEO, January, 2005

We have the people. Together, we can make health care work better.

“CAPP’s 35 MSMGs [multispecialty medical groups] share a common vision as learning organizations dedicated to the improvement of clinical care. Their features include physician leadership and governance; commitment to evidence-based care management processes; well-developed quality improvement systems; team-based care; the use of advance clinical information technology; and the collection, analysis, and distribution of clinical performance information. These features are congruent with the [Institute of Medicine’s] recommendations on key elements needed to redesign delivery systems.”

From Chapter 5, “Developing the Test Bed—Linking Integrated Service Delivery Systems: Council of Accountable Physician Practices,” by Michael A. Mustile, MD. The Learning Healthcare System: Workshop Summary (IOM Roundtable on Evidence-Based Medicine), edited by LeighAnne Olsen, Dara Aisner, and J. Michael McGinnis, National Academies Press, 2007.

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“A shift from the current care model to a more coordinated care model centered on primary care is one potential way to help stave off the healthcare dilemma.”

“It's too expensive to be a primary-care doctor,” by Debra A. Geihsler, president and CEO of Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates & Atrius Health. Boston Globe, July 25, 2007.

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Medicare Payment Advisory Committee’s March 2007 Report to the Congress: “In three of the four [metropolitan statistical] areas, beneficiaries whose main physician was in multispecialty or hospital-affiliated groups had lower average annual spending than beneficiaries whose main physician was in solo or single-specialty groups. At the highest quintile of spending, all four areas show lower average spending for beneficiaries whose main physicians were in multispecialty or hospital-affiliated groups.”

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