Annals of family medicine
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Annals of family medicine · Aug 2019
Multicenter StudyDifferences in Team Mental Models Associated With Medical Home Transformation Success.
Primary care transformation is widely seen as essential to improving patient outcomes and health care costs. The medical home model can achieve these ends, but dissemination and scale-up of practice transformation is challenging. We sought to understand how to move past successful pilot efforts by early adopters to widespread adoption by applying cognitive task analysis using the diffusion of innovations framework. ⋯ Our findings provide guidance to practice teams, health systems, and policymakers seeking to move beyond early adopters, to improve team functioning and advance the medical home transformation at scale.
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In this study, we evaluated family physicians' ability to estimate the service area of their patient panel-a critical first step in contextual population-based primary care. We surveyed 14 clinicians and administrators from 6 practices. ⋯ Average overlap was 75%, but participants overestimated their service area by an average of 166 square miles. Service area overestimation impedes implementation of targeted community interventions by practices.
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Annals of family medicine · Aug 2019
Supporting Physicians and Practice Teams in Efforts to Address the Opioid Epidemic.
Primary care physicians and practice teams increasingly recognize the need to take a role in addressing the growing epidemic of opioid use disorder (OUD) and opioid-related drug overdose deaths, but face considerable challenges in doing so. Through its work supporting practice transformation efforts, sharing innovations, and connecting key sectors within communities, the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement and several of its member regional health improvement collaboratives have identified innovative ways to support physicians and practice teams in transforming practice in ways that address a spectrum of issues related to opioid use. These strategies include efforts to prevent, identify, and treat opioid addiction, including reducing inappropriate prescribing; improving opioid prescribing safety; compassionately tapering chronic and/or high-dose opioid regimens; appropriately screening for and identifying OUD; initiating treatment with evidence-based medications for OUD within practice settings; and prescribing life-saving naloxone to reverse opioid overdose. By outlining specific initiatives and practice transformation efforts that several regional health improvement collaboratives across the country have implemented to support clinicians and their teams, this article offers examples of how clinicians can get support from collaboratives in their region to implement practice improvement efforts to advance this critically important work.
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Annals of family medicine · Aug 2019
Transformation Support Provided Remotely to a National Cohort of Optometry Practices.
We describe the results of a practice transformation project conducted within a national cohort of optometry practices participating in the Southern New England Practice Transformation Network. ⋯ Technical assistance to promote practice transformation can be provided remotely and at scale at low per-practice cost. Through the provision of timely, easily accessed ambulatory care, optometrists can improve the patient experience and reduce ED use, thereby reducing costs. The cost savings opportunities are immense because of the large volume and high expense of ED visits for ocular conditions that might otherwise be managed in ambulatory optometry practices.
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Annals of family medicine · Aug 2019
Practice Transformation Under the University of Colorado's Primary Care Redesign Model.
We compared the transformation experience of 2 family medicine practices that implemented the Primary Care Redesign (PCR) team-based model to improve access, quality, and experience without increasing cost. The University of Colorado's A.F. Williams Family Medicine clinic (pilot practice) implemented the model in February 2015, and a smaller, community-based practice (wave 2 practice) did so 2 years later, in February 2017. ⋯ The PCR model is associated with simultaneous improvements in quality, access, and clinician experience, as well as reductions in burnout, while maintaining staffing costs.