J Am Board Fam Med
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Clinicians are concerned about their patients' social determinants of health (SDH); yet, they are unsure how to effectively gather patient-level SDH data and intervene without adding to current administrative burdens. Designed properly, clinical registries offer solutions to integrate neighborhood SDH data with clinical data from electronic health records, enabling the understanding of community factors to guide patient care. ⋯ PHATE also permits residency training to meet community health competency milestones by incorporating the PHATE curriculum. These functions enhance value, and their utility in education and care delivery would benefit from further investigation.
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The objective of this study was to better understand the relationship between panel size, full-time status, and estimated socioeconomic status of a patient panel with types and number of primary care clinician inbox messages. ⋯ These findings contribute to our understanding of primary care workload, specifically as it relates to panel size, full-time status, and patient panel socioeconomic status. Increase in clinical time or panel size needs to come with trained team members or additional time to address inbox messages.
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In this narrative account, the author, a medical student, describes his encounters with several inpatients at a community hospital. He becomes acquainted with a patient's son, who, initially withdrawn, over the course of his mother's hospitalizations transforms into a compassionate volunteer. This change is made especially evident when the author meets another patient who recognizes the volunteer and reveals his very different past.
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Case Reports
Primary Care Is an Essential Ingredient to a Successful Population Health Improvement Strategy.
Primary care teams bridge health care to other sectors, making effective connections between health care and health. For health care systems to improve patient and population health, the important role of primary care must be recognized, celebrated, and strengthened. This commentary explores several of the current hot topics in policy discussions (eg, social determinants of health, population health) and gives examples of how these theoretical discussions are relevant to the real world of patient care. ⋯ Renewed investments must be made to strengthen delivery models that enable longitudinal, trusting relationships to develop between patients and primary care teams. Payment systems must shift away from fee-for-service models to new holistic reimbursement methods that reflect the value of a comprehensive scope of primary care practice and continuity of care. Measuring what matters in primary care will help to realign our focus on health.
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Using data from 2017 to 2018, we found that female family physicians, especially those younger than 40 years of age, experience burnout at higher rates than males. This has implications for the primary care workforce and suggests pathways for policy makers and health system administrators to more effectively tackle burnout in their organizations.