Measurably improved performance.
American medicine faces a crisis not only of cost but also of quality. Yet the biggest changes have focused primarily on who should pay for care while efforts to improve the care itself have sometimes taken a back seat. The result? A financially-driven approach that the public neither likes nor understands.

At its current rate of growth, health care spending could consume nearly half of U.S. GDP by mid-century.
—Source: “The Hidden Price Tag for Health Care,” by Daniel Akst, New York Times, December, 2004

There is a better way to improve the quality of care. And it’s being done everyday at Accountable Physician Practices.

When teams of health professionals share resources and patient knowledge, it becomes far easier to know what works best. Doctors have the right technology and greater support to improve performance. Care —not cost—drives health decisions. Better medicine means better health care outcomes and better lives, creating greater value for everyone.

• A recent survey indicated that doctors in large group practices are more likely to have access to practice-wide data and receive quality-of-care information. According to the researchers, doctors in large groups may have greater access to capital and thus be in a better position to implement both quality measurement and quality improvement.
—Source: “Measure, Learn and Improve: Physicians’ Involvement in Quality Improvement,” Audet, Doty, Shamasdin and Schoenbaum, Health Affairs, May, 2005

• In a study identifying the benefits of and barriers to large medical group practice, groups of at least moderate size were identified with the advantages of being able to monitor clinical performance, create organized processes to proactively improve care, implement clinical protocols and serve as units of analysis for which statistically reliable measurements of quality can be made.
—Source: “Benefits of and Barriers to Large Medical Group Practice in the United States,” Casalino, Devers, Lake, Reed and Stoddard, Archives of Internal Medicine, September, 2003

We have the ability. 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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